They arrived in Alexandria at midnight. As soon as they stepped off the train into the echoing station, they felt the softer, cooler air. “Ah,” Rygg said. “That feels great.”
They were immediately accosted by a dozen men, all smoking and offering them hotels. Rygg pointed to one of the men at random and he led them out of the station and to a row of taxis, yellow and black, rather than the white and black Cairo fleet. They got into one and in five minutes they were driving along a curving esplanade by the sea. Along the sea wall, couples strolled arm in arm. The traffic seemed slightly less frantic here than it had been in Cairo and the pedestrians moved at a slower pace. The taxi turned in and stopped at a seafront building with a dozen painted signs for hotels on the façade. Their tout led them up six flights of stairs to the Hôtel Serapis. He left them outside the glassed doors for a couple minutes while he argued with the proprietor, who had both arms curled around the overflowing ashtray on his desk, as though protecting it. For a moment, things looked as though they were going to turn violent, but when the tout finally opened the doors, the men were smiling and as sweet as could be. Rygg paid what they asked, gave the tout an extra ten-pound note, and at last they were led to a room with three beds. A balcony overlooked the esplanade, which curved around an immense bay. At the tip of one arm of the bay was Qait Bey, a castle-like structure topped with a flag: the fort that now stood where the ancient lighthouse had been. Beside the fort, dozens of boats bobbed at anchor.
For a few minutes, they leaned on the balustrade, looking out over the harbor. Then Lena said, “Now we must find internet café.”
They went down and wandered through the streets for a while, eventually coming to an open café – “Terminal Net” – and ducked inside. Four grimy computers sat in a row against a wall. Three were in use. A kid who couldn’t have been older than ten turned and gestured with his chin to the free one.
Rygg watched as Lena brought up a web browser and went to a Russian website. She clicked a couple buttons on that site, and was taken to another, did the same thing, and was taken to another. The sites seemed the standard gaudy affairs, with blinking cartoon heads and flashing banners. “What are you doing?” he asked.
She gestured at the screen. “This is Sasha’s idea. These are like, how you say … like doors. Each one hide us more. We go more and more far away, so no one can find who send the message.”
She clicked through some more of the gaudy, flashing sites, until she got to one that was plainer. It had a complicated web address. She got to a string of nearly identical numbers strung down the screen, and leaned forward, counting the numbers with a forefinger. She held her finger against the seventeenth number, brought the cursor to it and clicked. Up came a little rectangular dialog. Here she typed in: “Hôtel Serapis, Alexandria,” clicked the button below the dialog, and it disappeared.
Immediately, she shut the browser down, then restarted it and went to the BBC news site. Halfway down the screen was a small picture of the Alpensturm. Rygg leaned forward and read the article. “Massive Russian Rescue Operation Underway,” the headline read. “Four Russian submarines and one aircraft carrier are involved in the operation to retrieve the cargo ship Alpensturm from hijackers who boarded the ship on April 4, Russian officials said. The precise whereabouts of the ship are unknown, but it is believed to be west of the Cape Verde islands, off the Atlantic coast of Africa. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the ship was carrying timber on a routine voyage to Algiers when it was hijacked. Since then, there has been intense international speculation as to whether there was a military component to the cargo and what its ultimate destination might have been.”
Lena scrolled through the rest of the site, but there was no mention of a head found in a box in Cairo, or of a manhunt for three Russians and a middle-aged Norwegian oilman. She turned off the computer and paid the boy.
May 10
All of Captain Tamm’s crew had signed Visha’s three-page document, though Ivan had insisted on reading the whole thing thoroughly and asking questions. Finally, Ludo had taken him to one side, and Dmitri heard Ivan arguing about his “legal rights”. But in the end, even Ivan had signed his name. Visha sat back with a smile and carefully tamped the pile of papers into a neat stack. He placed a palm on the stack. “Excellent,” he said. “Now you are all officially wealthy men. You will be given your bank details, as well as a ticket to anywhere in the world you choose – except for Russia, of course – after we enter the port. You will also be given a contact number of someone inside Russia, in case you have any problems, or in case you need to just talk about your experience. You may keep in contact with each other. You may take other jobs, though you will not need to. But the one thing that is forbade is discussing what happened on board the Alpensturm – with anyone. It will be a few lost weeks in your life. Is that understood?”
And then it was over, and they all filed out.
May 14
Three days later, they were moving through the Straits of Gibraltar, with huge vessels on either side and ahead of them. Things were almost back to normal on board. The sailors had free movement for most of the day, though they were locked into their rooms at night. But the Siberian commandos were nowhere to be seen. Ivan said they’d all been put in the hold together. The new Russian commandos took them their meals.
On the morning of the 14th, as they were passing Sardinia on their left, Ludo came and sat on the steps of the galley and lit a cigarette. “God, that tastes wonderful,” he said as he sucked in a giant lungful of smoke. He expelled it slowly, with his eyes closed, then shook his head and smiled. “Being a hostage in the middle of the Atlantic is not a problem. Thin soup is not a problem. But giving up smoking – I was about to kill someone, seriously.”
Dmitri was kneading dough. “So where are you going?” he asked. “You’ve been everywhere. Are you going to choose somewhere new, or …”
“Bujumbura,” Ludo said. “No questions about it.”
“What the fuck? Where is Buj … Buja …”
“Bujumbura. The capital of Burundi, in central Africa. I was there once, a hundred years ago, doing a run for some French assholes. It’s a little town at the edge of Lake Tanganyika, nestled in the foothills of the Mountains of the Moon. Cheap French food in little restaurants along the lake. Cheap wine. The best coffee in the world. Tutsi girls – imagine a whole city filled with supermodels. It’s unbelievable. And no one knows about it.”
“Burundi. Wasn’t there a war or something there?”
“There was. For about six or seven years. Similar situation to Rwanda: Hutu, Tutsi. But things are calmer now, and there is really no danger at all. Or less danger than joining Captain Tamm’s crew, at any rate. Where are you going to go?”
Dmitri plucked at the dough. “I’m not sure. I have to look at a map. The world’s a pretty big place.” But the truth was that he was terrified. The crew was his family and the thought of giving up the relationships, and the only life he knew, made him panicky.
May 13
Rygg woke, from a dream that he was on an endless train journey, into morning sunlight as soft as cotton. The lace curtains on the balcony windows belled into the room and reflections off the sea coiled and meshed on the ceiling. He looked over at Lena. She had thrown off her sheet. She was like a mermaid washed in from the sea, or a fallen angel, with an ethereal beauty. Her pale hair lay mussed on the pillow and her hand lay loosely on her flat belly. She was wearing lavender panties that concealed nothing at all. He ran his bandaged hand across the stubble on his chin and his hairy gut, feeling like a mutilated troll ogling some princess in a fairy tale. Groaning, he got up and went to the balcony. The light blew across the tops of the waves. A few cars were out on the esplanade, and a horse carriage went clip-clopping past. Fishermen sat at intervals on the sea wall.
After a while, Lena joined him. She was dressed and had put her hair up. She looked at him sleepily.
“I’m hungry,” he said. “Want to see if we can get som
e breakfast?”
She nodded.
They went out into the streets and wandered for a while, coming across Midan Saad Zaghloul, a large green square in the center of the esplanade. The focus of the square was a bronze statue of a man in a fez striding toward the sea. Palm trees rustled all around. As they passed the statue, someone called, “Torgrim! Lena!” and they looked up. At an outdoor table across the street, Marin and Sasha were sitting, eating breakfast. Marin held up his coffee cup. “Torgrim,” he called. “This coffee is fantastic!” The café had awnings over the sidewalks, beneath which were set wicker tables and chairs with white canvas cushions.
Rygg and Lena ran across the street. Lena threw her arms around Marin and kissed him over and over. Rygg grinned and patted Sasha, who was drinking orange Fanta, on the back. Lena babbled at Marin in Russian, and he tried to extricate himself from her embrace. “Sit, sit,” he laughed. “I will tell you the whole story.”
So Rygg and Lena had coffee and tea while eating their breakfast and Marin told them what had happened, enjoying another cup of coffee while doing so. After he’d discarded the tickets, the mustached station security guard had taken them to a little room at the back of the station. There they were placed in the charge of a kid with an AK-47 while the security guard went to get his superiors. They weren’t even handcuffed, just told to sit on some wooden chairs.
Marin told the boy that he’d lost his wallet and passport. The boy, who was delighted to practice his English, was sympathetic – his sister had once lost her identification papers and it had taken a full year of trips to various offices and bribes to get her new ones. Marin let him talk for a while before asking if they could possibly have some tea. The boy unlocked the door and leaned out. But before he could call, Marin was on him. He dragged him back into the office, gagged him with some wadded papers tied with string, and stripped off his jacket, pants, and cap. Using the telephone cord, he bound the boy hand and foot. Then he put on the boy’s uniform, slung the AK-47 around his neck, and they marched straight out of the office, Sasha in front, and Marin holding him at gunpoint. As they rounded a corner, they heard voices and shouting behind them.
Marin told Sasha to run. He set off through the station. Marin dashed after him, waving the gun and shouting, while people scattered left and right. In the parking lot, Marin caught Sasha, and marched him over to a taxi. He ordered the driver out at gunpoint, shoved Sasha in, and they tore out through the gates of the station. In the rear-view mirror, he saw the mustached guard, with three elderly policemen, trot panting into the parking lot. The evicted taxi driver picked himself up off the tarmac and tottered over to them, gesticulating. But by that time, Marin and Sasha were well away.
They ditched the taxi and the disguise after six blocks, leaving the car in the parking lot of a Greek orthodox church, and the gun and uniform under the back seat. Then they meandered through a kilometer or two of alleys, getting as far away from the station as they could. By the Nile, they hopped in another taxi and headed south. When they were almost on the outskirts of the city, they got out. They took a minibus farther south, to a town called Beni Suef, which had a tiny train station. There, Marin bought two more tickets for Alexandria, on a third-class train that left Beni Suef at two in the morning. When they halted in the Cairo station, Marin made Sasha pretend to sleep with his face buried in his jacket, and went to the toilet. Peering through a crack in the window, he saw that the station was crawling with security forces. Luckily, though they watched the carriage doors, none of the soldiers thought to enter the train. They’d just arrived in Alexandria an hour ago.
“Wow!” said Rygg when Marin had finished. “You must be completely exhausted.”
“This coffee is helping,” he said. “Can we see your friend this morning?”
“Sure you don’t want a couple hours to rest?”
Marin shook his head. “We have little time,” he said.
Chapter 19
Faisal
After they’d drunk their coffee, Rygg hailed a taxi and they headed to the west, around the bay and then across to a walled-off section above which the tall angled arms of cranes and the prows of great ships loomed. Across from the port was a huge, crumbling building with stone lions’ heads leaning from the interstices between the windows. The façade was a mess of painted signs advertising various shipping agents and chandlers. Rygg led them inside, up four wide flights of stairs, to a wooden door fortified with brass knobs. Beside the door a brass plaque was screwed into the wall, with “Faisal Tahir Seif al-Din Osman, Shipping Agent” stamped into it. Rygg knocked.
The door opened to an interior so thick with smoke Marin thought at first that they’d stumbled onto a fire. But Rygg disappeared into the smoke and the others followed, with little or no trepidation.
Four men sat before a giant desk that took up half the room. Behind the desk was another man in a pinstripe suit. He looked to be about three hundred pounds. And about a hundred of those, Marin thought, were in his triple chins. All five men were smoking cigars and more cigars lay in an open box on the desk. Also on the desk were a dozen cell phones, an old-fashioned rotary-dial telephone, two open laptops, a newspaper, and a gun.
“Ya allah!” The obese man exclaimed as soon as Rygg stepped into the room. “I can’t believe it! Is it the ghost of Torgrim Rygg? Have you returned from the dead?” With a groan, he hauled himself up, leaned across the desk, and embraced Rygg, the ember of his cigar coming perilously close to his hair. Rygg was a large man, but he looked like a schoolboy in the other’s embrace. The obese man shooed his other companions out the door, and bade the four of them to take a seat. “And who are your friends?” he asked.
Rygg introduced Lena, Marin, and Sasha. “And this is Faisal Tahir, one of the most powerful men in Alexandria. He is a shipping agent.”
Faisal chewed on his cigar, shaking his head. “Really, I can’t believe it, Torgrim. I was told by three different people that they saw a burnt out yacht, rented in your name, drifting outside Marseille with two severely grilled corpses onboard.
“I managed to escape. I jumped into the water and drifted around on the cold open sea for fifteen hours or so before I was rescued. Unfortunately my crew wasn’t as lucky.”
“Unbelievable,” Faisal said. “Well, have cigars, please.” He pushed the box toward them and tinkled a little bell. “Tea will arrive shortly.” He had a tinge of a British accent. “Now, I have just met you,” he looked at Marin, “but I think I recognize you from this.” Using the tips of his ringed fingers, he swiveled a newspaper around and tapped a photograph. “Look here. The article says two foreigners escaped from custody in Cairo last night. This is the CCTV picture from Mahattat Ramsis. It is you, mish kida?”
They all leaned forward. The camera had caught the two of them running through the main lobby of the train station. Sasha’s face was a white blur, but Marin, under the soldier’s cap, was quite recognizable.
“Yes, that is me and Sasha,” Marin put his arm around Sasha and grinned. “We have had a crazy time. Where does it say that we went?”
“According to the article, you are at large in Shubra. The airports are on full alert.”
“Excellent.” Marin took the cigarettes from his pocket, but Faisal nudged the case of cigars toward him. Marin leaned forward and chose a cigar. He snipped off the end with a pair of gold scissors attached by a chain to the humidor. Faisal leaned across the desk and torched the cigar with a lighter shaped like the Venus de Milo: her head snapped back and the flame emerged from her throat. Marin blew a long stem of smoke at the ceiling, where it frayed into loose fronds.
“So what is it this time, Torgrim?” Faisal said. “More guns?”
“Something much more serious, I’m afraid, Faisal,” he said. “It’s the Alpensturm. You know, the ship that was hijacked in the Baltic.”
“Baad al-shaar!” Faisal exclaimed. “You’re not mixed up with that?”
“What do you know about it?”
�
�Everything I have heard is bad. According to one of my chaps – Lebanese, with French connections – it’s carrying nuclear.”
“Does he have proof?”
“None at all. And the latest, you heard, is that the Russians have boarded the ship.”
“Yes, I read that.”
“So tell me everything.”
“I will let my friend do that.” He nodded at Marin, who hesitated a second, the cigar halfway to his lips.
“Tell him everything,” Rygg told Marin. “Faisal is a scoundrel as he will be the first to admit, but you can trust him absolutely.”
So Marin told Faisal the whole story, starting with the Swiss bank account, describing Yuri’s images and what Rygg had discovered in the Ministry of Defense, and finishing up with the gory package in Ataba.
When he described the contents of the package, Faisal leaned back and guffawed, hiccupping gouts of smoke. “Not a very nice present,” he said. “But I have sent a few packages of that sort. It makes an impression, I can assure you.” Then he sobered up. “But why was it a present of Youssef’s head to you and not a present of your head to Youssef?”
Marin nodded. “This of course is what I have been asking myself since Moscow. Why am I still alive? If they knew about Hamburg, about Paros, why am I still alive?”
“And you say no one knew that you left Moscow?”
“Only the driver and the pilot. That is all.”
“So how did they find you in Cairo?”
Marin spread his hands. “I can’t think. It has been troubling me for the last twelve hours and I honestly cannot think of a viable answer.”
“It sounds like you have some problems to deal with, my friend,” Faisal said, turning to Rygg.
“And that’s why we came to you,” Rygg said. “Since you’re the pharaoh of problem solving. Are you willing to do a little calling around for us?”
“Why not,” he shrugged. It was a rather fast agreement to help, despite the demise that so many who tried to help had received.
Chasing the Storm Page 22