“What is scum?” he said.
“Svoloch.”
“Ah.” He studied the open air again. “Swim,” he said. “Swim or try to fight you, or take back my ship.” He was thoughtful for another moment. “The ship, she is the one easier to come home alive.”
“I would think so. How difficult will it be to get her moving if half your crew is dead?”
“Depend on which half. If both engineer are dead maybe I can get oil up, but then it must be someone else to run the bridge.”
Munroe nodded. Paced through the scenarios. It didn’t seem possible that the entire crew had been killed—not based on the news that had come across the wires.
He said, “I help you, we bring her to Mombasa, and yes, you let me go?”
“It’s what I promised.”
“And my problem?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “If I can solve it, I will. Not for you—I have my own reasons—but I still need to know why they want you.”
He sighed, shifted, and fully stretched out, and with his hands now free, laced his fingers atop his belly and closed his eyes. Annoyed, she turned to leave. From behind, his voice said, “You know who is Aleksey Petrov?”
She swiveled back. Sat again. “First deputy minister with the Russian Ministry of Defense,” she said.
“Yes, is who he is now. You know who he is before?”
“He had a military career, then went into the telecom business, and then the ministry.”
The captain opened his eyes. “Is all good on paper,” he said. “And Nikola Goran, you know who he is?”
“I know who they say you are,” she said. “Serbian colonel wanted for war crimes, ethnic cleansing against Bosnian Muslims.”
“Is not so good on paper,” he said, and chuckled. His laugh caught in his throat and he hacked a cough. “I did many things during the war,” he said, and elbowed back up into a half-sitting position. “Many things for which I have pride, and many things for which there is shame. But I did not make the mass graves and the killing and the genocide for what they say of me.”
Munroe nudged space free against the nearest box, close enough that she could see the lines on his face, could read his expressions and body language, but not so close that she crowded him. He stopped talking when she shifted nearer, so she closed her eyes and tipped her head back against the boxes, waited for him to begin again, knew he would—everything she’d said and done to him over the past weeks had been to soften him for this moment.
“Do you know of Bijeljina?” he said.
She shrugged. Opened her eyes a sliver.
“And of the foreigners who came to fight in the war?”
She nodded. This she knew from the time she’d spent in that part of the world: the three basic divisions that had fought in the divided Yugoslavia, and the foreign support that came to them along the same ethnic and religious lines. Muslims had rallied to the aid of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Catholics to the Croats, Orthodox to the Serbs: long-standing ties and alliances that ran so far into history they’d been the start of World War I. The alliances hadn’t changed much since and so beckoned foreigners into a war in which over two hundred thousand Muslim civilians were murdered and two million more were made refugees—volunteer armies and mercenaries fighting along historical fault lines.
Outside governments disavowed and distanced themselves from official involvement, but it was no secret that weapons and advice funneled in from abroad: Russian and Greek to the Serbs, Western European and U.S. to the Croats, and Muslim to the Bosnians.
“I was in Bijeljina during the killing,” he said. “Is worse in life than what you read in reports. Serbians have close connection with Russia, you know this, yes? Aleksey Petrov, he is in Bijeljina also.”
He paused, as if waiting for her to prod him for more or to ask for clarification, but she didn’t. “Aleksey came as consultant,” he said. “Soldier consultant. Unofficial, of course. No uniforms, no official documents, but he fight with us like soldier, same as us, courtesy of Mother Russia.” The captain tapped a forefinger to his temple. “Aleksey is not so right in the head, I think. He likes the killing too much. Is sport for him, not war. Was not only Aleksey who did killing in Bijeljina, but he did much, and he gave orders and when at first soldiers don’t listen, he make the first kill and then make many more.” He paused again and when he still received no response from her, said, “Do you see?”
“I really don’t,” she said. “It’s an interesting tale, but it doesn’t answer the question of why your ship was hijacked. That war is twenty years old and last I checked, you, not Aleksey Petrov, are the wanted war criminal.”
“There are pictures,” he said.
“You have pictures of Aleksey in Bijeljina?”
“I know they exist. Before the war end, I go back and I find them. Was not so very easy, you think.”
Munroe stayed quiet for a moment, processing, filling in the blanks of what he hadn’t said, and in a roundabout way the attack on the Favorita began to make sense. “Nearly two decades,” she said. “Why now?”
“You know,” he said.
“Pretend I don’t.”
He sighed and closed his eyes, and annoyed at his sudden return to acting coy, she kicked his foot. He opened his eyes again and grinned, as if to say he knew he’d gotten under her skin, and as much as she played like she didn’t care, he wasn’t an idiot.
She said, “A man like Aleksey Petrov wouldn’t care about being blackmailed—it’s not like he earned that position or got voted into it. No one cares about anything he’s done in the past—especially not something that happened in Bosnia when Russia sided with the Serbs in the first place. No one is going to fire or arrest him.”
“Maybe arrest,” the captain said. “If I take pictures to tribunal, maybe there is some problems for him. There are many pictures. Very bad pictures. Small problems for here, but in Russia small problem with right people is still a big problem for wrong people.”
“The weapons in the hold came from him?”
“A way to make retirement,” he said. “Sell to South Sudan, push through Somalia, and then I find an island and I am finished.”
“Mombasa is an island,” she said. “You got close.”
He choked on a half laugh and waved at her. “You try to make funny.”
“Sometimes it works,” she said. Then, after a pause, “So Aleksey wants you dead.”
“Maybe alive and dead at same time. As I say, killing for him is sport.”
“You knew that before you tried to blackmail him.”
“Yes,” he said, and sighed. “I send him e-mail of few pictures. I don’t know what will come of it, but he is in a good position to get me what I want, is an opportunity, I give a try. I use fake name and fake e-mail and fake phone. I work with people to make buffer so he can’t find me.”
Munroe understood then the purpose of the arms in the hold; the Trojan horse that led one piece of scum to another, and the reason no mention of the weapons had been made was because no one who knew about them even cared.
“Well, you got what you wanted,” she said.
“Much more.”
“How did they find you?”
He shrugged and his eyes cast downward, and for the first time in the conversation she picked up the shame of failure. In a double act of indignity, he’d been outsmarted by a man responsible for his own twenty-year run, and every day in her captivity had been a reminder of that failure.
She offered him an out. “Perhaps they used the AIS,” she said. “Once the weapons were on their way to you, they would eventually have figured out that you captained the Favorita, and it wouldn’t be too difficult to track you through the ship.”
“I make the AIS disabled after we come around the Horn,” he said. “That is the easy way to track, and is never good to make easy, so I disconnect it.”
And that explained why the ship never turned up in any searches.
“Did you check the
weapons, the crates, the pallets, for GPS tracking?”
“Certainly I check,” he said, and huffed as if offended by the implication that he’d been a fool to make such a simple oversight. “In any case, the hold, she provide too much cover to transmittal. She is a dark zone with no signal.”
“Then maybe one of your officers.”
His expression tightened as if he hurt. “I know these men couple years,” he said. “We work together on team, on same ship for two years. They know what we do, they help plan, they get paid good. But maybe, I don’t know.”
Munroe closed her eyes and rested her head against the boxes again. He had a good narrative, a good act. The plausibility filled in a lot of holes, but this was still just a story, one for which she might never know the actual truth—and she didn’t really care. Whatever he’d left out—rivalry, hatred, a catalytic event that drove a decades-long thirst for retribution—someone had sent a delegation of Russian military men after the captain, had used Somali financing and Somali pirates to cover their tracks, had used Kenyans to intimidate and kill people they thought were hiding him. These were facts she knew to be true. Her interest in the finer points was to understand the strength of her enemy.
She said, “When we go after the ship, the tracker, wherever it is or whoever has it, is still there, and once we start moving, the people who did this are going to be watching for it, they’ll be waiting.”
“Is a problem,” he said. “Is your problem.”
It was her problem, but it was going to become his problem too if they got hijacked again.
CHAPTER 38
Raised voices broke the conversation, and Munroe leaned around the boxes, caught sight of Khalid and Natan facing off, hands gesticulating, each arguing in his own language while the other men crowded in from their places on the dhow, ants moving toward the ant mound, lines drawn and sides taken. Amber, ignored by the others because she was a woman, stood outside the circle. Braced against the bulwark for recoil, her rifle inching higher.
Munroe flipped to her side and scrambled over the supplies that blocked her way, caught her breath and choked through the wave of darkness that washed in with the pain: a stabbing reminder that she’d not yet healed. Slid a knife from its hidden sheath and, knowing she wouldn’t reach the antagonists before someone did something stupid, yelled at them.
Her voice was weak beneath the drone of the engine, carried away by the hiss of the wind, but strong enough that the Somali men on the edge of the circle heard her and glanced in her direction. She continued forward, slowed by the boat’s movement, yelled again, and finally Khalid and Natan both turned.
“Are you insane?!” she screamed. Waved a hand toward Khalid. “Get back,” she said, and the same toward Natan in English, “Back!”
Neither man moved but she had their attention, and those who’d crowded around parted enough to allow her through. She got between Khalid and Natan, and in Somali, loud enough that all of the hawaladar’s men would hear, said, “Save the anger. You’ll need it to survive when we get to the end of our journey.”
Khalid didn’t answer, nor did he concede territory, but his grip on the rifle relaxed slightly and his jaw unclenched. Munroe resheathed the blade burning hot against her skin; breathed past rage at the alpha chest-thumping that wouldn’t permit either man to stand down—one-upmanship that could so easily become the death of them all. She turned to Natan and, as a way to allow him to step aside without surrendering, said, “We need to talk,” then nudged him, using her body to crowd him away from the circle so that he was forced to move.
Out of earshot of the others, voice lowered and tone as neutral as anger would allow, she said, “Dick measuring is going to get you killed. Not me. You. And probably Amber, too. Tell me there’s a good reason for whatever the hell that just was.”
He shook his head. “Stupidity,” he said.
“Did it start with Khalid?”
“With that one,” he said, and nodded toward Ali.
She cut a glance over and watched the dispersing circle. “Khat withdrawal,” she said. “It’s going to get worse, okay? Working with it won’t make you less of a man.”
“Fucking barbarians,” he said, and Munroe had no response that wouldn’t reignite the tinder she’d just put out, so she turned her back and climbed in the direction she’d come. She squeezed by Amber, caught her eye, and in the steel of Amber’s expression knew that there’d been no bluff in her actions: she would have put a bullet in every one of those men, perhaps even Natan, if a fight had threatened to derail the mission and get between her and Leo.
Munroe sat outside the canopy where she could observe the length of the boat and ensure that the squabble didn’t pick back up again, played the knife against her fingers, stayed through the lengthening shadows, running scenarios, measuring threats, until the sun began to set, its light replaced by orange pinpricks and cigarette smoke. She scooted beneath the canopy. Joe nodded an acknowledgment and, although he’d certainly seen the ruckus, said nothing, asked nothing. Munroe sat beside the captain and closed her eyes. She’d wait until the evening deepened, would apologize to Khalid on Natan’s behalf and do the same for Natan in the morning, damage control by reinventing the conversation—the benefit of being the only one able to speak everyone else’s language.
THE DHOW NEARED Garacad late in the morning. Yusuf cut the engine and they drifted far enough out that despite the easy way sound carried over the water, the growls of the generator and air compressor wouldn’t invite other players to the private party. Floating, rising and falling with the swells, tempers and the irritation of the past days transformed into impatient tension until the inflatables were filled and readied, weapons checked, ammunition prepared, and attack plan coordinated; then there was nothing more to do but wait.
The dhow grew quiet, and under the canopy and other improvised shade, they ate and napped through the high afternoon heat, waiting for the dark to come. When the first of the cooling arrived and the men began to stir again, Munroe ducked behind the curtain of the makeshift head and there wrapped her torso, loop after loop of medical tape, uncomfortable and constricting, forming it into a cast of sorts. She’d avoided ibuprofen for the duration of the trip, a way to ensure the meds were completely out of her system and reduce the chance of overdosing, but even with the maximum amount she could safely take tonight, she’d still run a fine line between agony and immobility until the adrenaline kicked in and drowned out her body’s limitations.
Torso set, Munroe left the head for the nearest drinking water. Funneled it from the container into an empty bottle and brought the bottle to Amber, who was resting under the shade of a towel stretched between fuel barrels. Munroe offered the water and when Amber took it, Munroe sat wordlessly beside her. Amber unscrewed the cap, drew a long swallow, and, recapping it, tipped her head onto Munroe’s shoulder. After several long minutes Amber said, “The anticipation is the worst, you know? Misery in the waiting.”
Munroe patted Amber’s thigh and drew in her quiet sigh; she wouldn’t offer words of comfort or reassurance though it would cost nothing to speak such small lies in a life of lies; Amber deserved better than that. “It’ll be better when we get moving again,” Amber said. “Once the fighting finally starts.”
“I need to ask you a favor,” Munroe said.
Head still tipped to Munroe’s shoulder, Amber said, “I’m not staying behind with the dhow no matter how nice you ask or how much you beg.”
Munroe smiled and leaned her cheek against Amber’s hair. “Not as bad as that. I just need you to stay on the water until we secure the deck.”
“Why?”
“I need someone to keep control over the captain.”
“I thought he was part of this now.”
“Supposedly,” Munroe said. “But even if we take the freighter, his problems are only just beginning, and he knows it. Given access to one of the inflatables, he’s more likely to use the distraction to run, to commandeer the dhow, mak
e a return to Kenya on his own and try to disappear. It’s what I would do if I were in his shoes. I can’t risk leaving him alone, but I can’t bring him onto the ship until we have a secure zone.”
“One of the men can handle him.”
“You’re the only one I trust to do it right.”
“My priority is getting on that ship, Michael.”
“I know it is,” Munroe whispered.
“Yeah,” Amber said, and they were silent for several more minutes until she spoke again. “We don’t need him,” Amber said. “One of the ship’s officers could pilot, could get the freighter out.”
“If they’re alive, then yes, but it’s more than that. I need him.”
“As a trophy?”
“As a trump card.”
Amber was quiet again, her breathing slow and deep, and with each inhale her torso expanded to touch Munroe’s skin, a connection that warmed and withdrew several times until at last Amber said, “If there’s no other way.”
“Would have asked anyone else if it didn’t matter as much.”
Amber nodded, lifted her head off Munroe’s shoulder. “I’ll wait ten, fifteen minutes. After that, I’m coming up. I’ll send him ahead.”
Munroe patted Amber’s thigh again: camaraderie, the only person she trusted in this whole damn mess. Then she stood and left for the captain, the pawn upon which the game still turned.
THE INFLATABLES SLIPPED away from the dhow under the cover of late night, four people to a boat, moving slowly over the water to keep the sound of approach as low as possible and retain the element of surprise, assuming they’d ever actually had it. Munroe sat in the middle of her craft, opposite the captain, while Khalid guided the tiller and Amber, face blackened with camouflage paint, faced the wind. Lights from the shore winked like stars in the far distance blending sky and sea, and somewhere far ahead, still out of sight, the Favorita anchored as a ghostly fortress on the water: a vessel of death no matter what happened tonight.
The Catch: A Novel Page 29