They reached the boxes and she pointed them out.
“They’re small,” Natan said.
“Yes.”
“You can’t carry them?”
“No,” she said.
He turned from the boxes to face her directly, took a step into her personal space, and her hand reached for the knife on her belt.
“Every day you climbed to the rooftop next door,” he said, “and here you can’t even carry these?” He leaned down, lifted the first of the two boxes, which probably didn’t weigh but ten or fifteen pounds. “Turning into a girl did this to you?”
“No,” she said. “Two fractured ribs did this to me.”
He grunted. Stacked the second box on top of the first, picked them both up, and heaved them onto a shoulder, and they began the return trip to the house.
After several minutes Natan said, “You got the fractures during the hijacking?”
“After the hijacking.”
“I don’t understand how you got off the ship,” he said: another subtle jab and not-so-subtle accusation.
“I went over the side and took one of the attack boats.”
“Very convenient for you that it was there waiting.”
“It was also very convenient that I speak Somali.”
“You could have fought with them. You and your supposed skill. You could have made a difference.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Would have too, if Leo had agreed to cut me in, paid me what he was paying everyone else, you included.”
“You abandoned your team,” Natan said, and he spat the words with far more venom than the point required. “The plan to hijack the ship back, what is this? Atonement? Apology?”
Munroe paused, breathed past the rising anger. His rush to condemn wasn’t bait meant to taunt or prod her into revealing information; his was a genuine smug self-righteousness, and it provoked the same rage as Leo’s arrogant dismissal when she’d found the weapons and he’d denied her what was fair.
“They weren’t my team,” she said. “Yours, but not mine, and if you want to point fingers, point one at yourself. You colluded with Leo to put what you thought was an ignorant eighteen-year-old kid on the ship when you, just like Leo, knew the risks. You should have been there and you know it. Don’t project your guilt onto me.”
He turned and with his free hand jabbed a finger toward her chest. Instinct overrode caution and the threat of pain. She batted his hand away and moved into his personal space before she’d taken a breath, and it was clear that the response, which he should have anticipated based on what he now knew, took him by surprise.
He stood awkwardly, with one hand balancing the boxes on his shoulder, while they remained chest to chest and she read the calculation in his eyes. She stayed in his space, breathing his air, until at last he laughed as if she were a joke, exhaled, and took a half step back. “You are using Amber and me for something,” he said.
“I’m going after the ship,” she said, “for Amber, maybe Victor, for the ship’s crew, who didn’t have a choice in any of this.”
“No,” Natan said. “That would be altruistic. There is no such thing, not even for Mother Teresa.” He jabbed his finger at her again, careful to keep it from touching her. “A feeling of goodness, scoring bonus with God, whatever the reason, even the saintly get something for the sacrifice, and you are no saint. You are not doing this out of goodness. You have a motive and it’s not noble.”
“You don’t believe in altruism?” she said.
“No.”
“Good. Neither do I, so we both agree that since Leo refused to pay me for my work, I was under no obligation to save his ass.”
Natan’s mouth opened, then shut, then opened again, and he said, “But you pretend to save it now.”
“Confusing, isn’t it?” she said, and she smiled a fake smile. “Like I told you, I’m going after the ship.”
CHAPTER 33
They reached the front door and Munroe opened it. Amber stood in the hallway with a rifle raised toward the door, same as Natan had when she’d first returned, as if the two of them expected an assault on the house at any time—wariness that would certainly come in handy if the Russians did get wind of the hideaway. “I told you guys not to bring weapons,” Munroe said.
Amber lowered the gun. “It was our call. Our necks if we got caught.”
“There’s food in the boxes,” Munroe said. “Is the captain still here?”
“He’s in the room.”
“When did you last check?”
“When Natan left with you. He’s sleeping.”
“Supposedly. He say anything while I’ve been gone?”
“He’s asked a few times who you are, but nothing more than that.”
“Didn’t ask about you and Natan?”
“Nope, just you,” Amber said. “I gave him the same story you told us when you came looking for work.” Then she paused. The absurdity settled in, and she snickered, and then the snicker turned into a snort, and then into laughter, and her laughter was infectious and Munroe laughed too.
Natan huffed and brushed past with a box under each arm and carried the supplies into the kitchen. Let them down with a thud loud enough that it filtered back into the foyer. When the laughter subsided, Amber said, “You look pretty rough. When’s the last time you ate?”
When was it? Dinner yesterday? Munroe shook her head.
“Slept?”
“Off and on.”
“I know there’s a lot of tension right now,” Amber said, and nodded toward the kitchen, where sounds of containers being dumped against the tiled counter reached out. “He’s being a drama queen. Just let it go. And no matter what his problem is, I trust you—I appreciate what you’ve done so far, appreciate your sticking with us. After what Leo did to you, this really isn’t your fight.”
“Thank you,” Munroe said, and left it at that. Amber’s was an empathetic gesture, especially considering she wasn’t even aware of the full extent of Leo’s betrayal. Amber said, “If you want to sleep, I can watch your prisoner.”
“I got it,” Munroe said, and she moved for the kitchen.
Amber hovered and when Munroe glanced back, Amber said, “It’s good working with you again, Michael. Wish the circumstances could be different, but I’ve missed you.”
Munroe stood a moment facing her, then offered a small smile and continued on. Pain levels that had risen tremendously over the past hours had amped higher in her smack-back against Natan, and now that he was out of sight the full impact wound through her limbs and left her shaking. She needed rest. Needed food even more.
When she walked into the kitchen, Natan turned and left. Munroe ignored him. Running this rescue would be a whole lot easier if it didn’t involve dealing with a grown man with the emotional development of a thirteen-year-old. She picked out a couple of eggs and a packet of maandazi, deep-fried dough pieces, the Kenyan version of doughnuts, which would have enough carbs and calories to bolster her energy levels. Opened a bottle of water, drank half of it down, and wiped her mouth on her sleeve, while in the living area Natan conferred with Amber in hushed clipped conversation, his hands chopping the air with angry punctuation.
AT THE WATERLINE the waves rolled in, low and slow in their long approach to the beach, and Munroe sat just beyond the water’s reach and drew in the ocean air and the last of the calm of solitude. From behind, beyond the house, came an approaching rumble that broke the morning stillness. The heat hadn’t started yet, but it would come soon. Another sunrise, another day alive, another debt waiting to be claimed.
She’d woken before the sun, and much as she had on the rooftop in Djibouti, she’d come to the water’s edge waiting for the light to rise. She’d roused the captain when she’d gotten up, allowed him to bathe and to use the threadbare sheet from the bed as a sarong of sorts so that he could wash out the clothes he’d lived in for the past several days, and then returned him to his room and left him there, the door barricaded again by t
he chair.
The truck had already shut off by the time she reached the front of the house. The taste of burned diesel still hung in the air, and the three men who’d been in the snub-nosed cab had climbed out and now stood by the open doors in a silent standoff, their attention turned toward the front of the house, where Natan and Amber casually filled the front door’s threshold.
There were no weapons visible, but they were surely at hand, both with the mercenaries and within easy reach of the visitors, somewhere inside the truck cab. Munroe called out a hello in Somali and all five turned to face her, an instant break in the tension. The man on the passenger side of the truck lifted aviator sunglasses and walked in her direction. Like his two compatriots, he was dressed casually, collared short-sleeved pullover shirt, baggy jeans that had seen extended wear, and imported sports shoes. No jewelry or watch, but there was an outline of a cell phone in his pocket, and he carried himself confidently enough that it seemed he was used to giving orders.
Munroe extended a hand, and when he reached her, he took it and said, “Are you Michael?”
She nodded. “Khalid?”
“Yes,” he said, and his English was crisp and articulate with a tinge of British, like the hawaladar’s. Cousin, the hawaladar had said, although in this part of the world cousin could mean any member of the extended family no matter how far removed. Munroe glanced toward the back of the truck, dented and rusted, an uncovered shell with rails too high for her to view the contents from the ground. “May I?” she said, and Khalid took a step back as if to give her space.
She used the rear tire as a boost, a wheel lashed to the axle with a cut of two-by-four and rope instead of lug nuts, pulled herself up with her right hand so as not to put another round of strain on the weakened ribs, but getting up was still its own form of torture. She scanned the contents of the truck bed, then dropped off and dusted her hands on her pants.
The hawaladar had held true to his word: fuel, generator, air compressor, drinking water, food, and shade. Weapons would come later. She said, “Do you want to unload here or bring the truck around to the shore?”
“Let me see the spot first,” Khalid said.
Munroe turned toward Amber and Natan, both still glaring and silent. The men showing up on the property wasn’t a surprise; she’d briefed them on the truck’s pending arrival, so it shouldn’t have been an issue. Munroe waved and said, “I’ve got it. Relax.”
Natan turned on his heels and stomped inside, and it was easy to imagine that he’d found someplace that he could use to keep an eye on the newcomers through a scope.
Munroe shook hands with the other two Somali men and they introduced themselves as Omar and Ali. Like Khalid’s, their English was clean and articulate, though without the undertones of having been educated abroad. Amber left her perch by the door, approached the truck, and stood by Munroe, and when Munroe introduced her to Khalid, Amber held out a hand, and in an awkward shuffling he didn’t accept, and neither did Omar or Ali.
“It’s a cultural thing,” Munroe said. One example out of thousands as to why she dressed and carried herself as a boy so much of the time. “Not personal.”
Amber’s brow furrowed, but she was smart enough not to say anything. The men might, in their own time, discover Munroe’s gender, but by then the cultural and religious boundaries would already have been crossed so often that for the sake of the job they would continue as though nothing had changed. Munroe led Khalid down to the beach, and Amber followed a few feet behind.
THE DHOW ARRIVED in the late afternoon, a forty-foot wooden vessel with a high bow, twin engines, and a rattan roof on posts that provided shade for the back half. Calls and shouts that came from the outside pulled Munroe out of a hazy heat-induced sleep, and she rose from the rough-hewn bench that passed for a sofa. Locked the front door from the inside and then left the house through the rear. Stood on the small porch watching the arrival, shading her eyes from the afternoon sun, while the boat slowed and dropped anchor a few hundred meters offshore, just beyond the break.
The truck, which had been backed down to the edge of the sand since morning, had drawn the attention of nearby villagers. The number of onlookers had ebbed and flowed throughout the day and at the moment eight men and boys were seated under the shade of a mango tree at the edge of the property, staring at the parked vehicle and the lazy lack of movement as if the circus had come to town.
Amber left the house and stood beside Munroe, and then together they strode down to the sand and sat on the beach to watch while the two men on the boat lowered a pirogue over the side and one paddled in to shore.
“Where’s Natan?” Munroe said.
“Up in a tree somewhere, maybe.”
“He doesn’t trust them?”
“Natan doesn’t trust anybody.”
“What about you?”
“You know what you’re doing,” Amber said. “That’s all I need. Natan knows it too, he just doesn’t like it.”
The pirogue neared the waterline and the three men from the truck went into the water to push it up along the sand. They handled the little craft deftly, and Munroe studied their movements, gauged their ability to work together. They weren’t strangers to the ocean, and that would be a plus; she waited until the men were back up on the shore and then stood and shook the sand off her pants. They knew what needed to get done and she’d only be in the way and cause animosity if she started handing out orders. She returned to the house, to the kitchen, and collected food and water for the captain.
She left the door open while he ate so that air could circulate and lessen the smell of sweat and body odor. He would have heard the commotion throughout the morning, and an information void was its own form of questioning. She allowed him time and silence and he made it halfway through his meager meal before he said, “Who makes all the noise outside?”
“We’re preparing for the next phase of the project,” she said.
“You are going to Somalia?”
“We. We are going to Somalia, unless you’d rather go to the Russians.”
“There are no good choices,” he said, and he continued to eat, so she let him be. After another few minutes he said, “You find the name I give you?”
“Both names,” she said. “You’ve managed to stay hidden for a long time.”
He nodded as if to affirm the obvious and said, “You believe everything you read?”
She’d proven printed facts wrong so often that she rarely believed anything she read, and that the people who wanted him had hijacked his ship some twenty years after he’d gone on the run only strengthened her lack of belief. “I’d be interested in hearing your version of events,” she said.
He set the last of the food aside and drank down half a liter of water. “Nothing good will come from telling,” he said, and wiped his mouth, lay back, and closed his eyes. “Maybe you figure it out by yourself. Then you know.”
“Perhaps,” she said, and stood and stepped into the hall.
Found Natan waiting there, weapon slung over his shoulder, leaned back, one leg kicked up against the opposite wall. It was as if he’d been listening to the conversation while waiting for her, suspicion and mistrust worn like a shirt, as if from his point of view every move she made was a potential betrayal, as if she’d just come from conspiring with the captain and the Somalis on the property were planning to kidnap them all and deliver them to pirates once they were under way.
Munroe shut the door and sent the captain back into darkness, resecured the handle with the chair, and when she’d finished, Natan straightened and took a step forward and in doing so blocked her path. She made to inch beyond him and he stepped directly in front of her.
Without the energy or desire to try to out-alpha him, she sighed and said, “If you have something to say, say it. Otherwise, get out of my way.”
He glowered for several long seconds before stepping aside in a movement that wasn’t deference but rather magnanimous wish granting.
Amber had moved to the porch, so Munroe sat next to her and, like the crowd of onlookers under the mango tree, lazed in the shade swatting away flies, watching as two of the Somali men paddled the pirogue out to the dhow, placed a fuel barrel within straps to be raised onto the vessel, and then paddled back for another turn loading: one slow trip at a time; the way of a continent where time and manual labor were the cheapest commodities of all.
CHAPTER 34
The truck rolled off the property before dawn, a belching, creaking, crawling lurch up the gutted track between trees and overgrown vegetation, and Munroe braced her feet against the peeling vinyl of the dash to keep from getting tossed about. They’d left Khalid and one of the men from the dhow behind. Omar, as driver and presumably the one in charge, had invited Munroe to take the passenger seat, relegating Ali and the second boatman to the truck bed.
Munroe called the hawaladar along the way, confirmed their progress, and updated him with details that Khalid would already have told him, and they rode the long journey into the city for the airport, an inconvenient trip that detoured them back onto the island, and then off again, west as if they were to make the slog to Nairobi, then south again toward the airport and the complex of stone and concrete walls and metal roofs that warehoused airfreight through the customs-clearing process.
Munroe stepped from the truck to an area dry and dusty, where even the aggressive grass and foliage couldn’t compete with the trampling of far too many footsteps. Omar pointed out the hawaladar’s Land Rover, and Munroe walked in its direction while the men from the truck clambered out, found shade near the front tires, and sat there, content to wait.
The rear door of the Land Rover opened before she reached it, and the hawaladar invited her into the air-conditioning. She said, “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“We’re in a hurry and there will be a lot of hands to fill,” he said.
The Catch: A Novel Page 25