The Sea and the Sand

by Finn Óg

  “I brought them here for safety, not money” Sam said.

  “Yes, yes, well, we have you now and you will be processed and so will these people. They will be sent home eventually.” The coastguard seemed to know everything.

  Sam looked at the policemen on either side of him. “And what are you two going to do? Are you going to jail me for helping someone?”

  The two carabinieri were young, probably far from home and placed in the heart of Mafia land with no idea what to expect. They didn’t appear to understand a word Sam was saying. The coastguard began an exchange with them, nodding knowingly before reverting to Sam.

  “They will take you to the police station and then they will process the foreigners.” He nodded at the woman and Sadiqah who were now huddled together just short of the altar.

  Sam stared at them. “I know you can speak English.” He directed his call to the woman. “I know she’s your daughter and that man wasn’t your husband. Isla told me. I know she is Sadiqah. Now, for the love of God, will you tell these men I am not a trafficker? Tell them what happened!”

  She stared at him for a second and then, as a rooster crowed for the first time, he heard her speak.

  “I never seeing this man before,” she said.

  Twelve

  The driver stared at the phone as it blinked its displeasure. It also offered a loud beep warning the three men in the cab that if it didn’t receive some nourishment soon, it would shutdown.

  “Have any of you got a charging cable for that thing?” the driver inquired. He knew he was on the hook to see through this curious command.

  The two soldiers to his left shook their heads. Of course they didn’t.

  Twenty minutes later they were treated to another bleep and forty minutes into the journey the phone gave an exhausted I-told-you-so string of bleeps as it settled into deep sleep.

  In Cairo a police tech dialled another mobile phone and in Alexandria Tassels answered at a snatch.

  “Where is it?”

  “It was stationary for a long while, then it was on the move for about fifty miles and now it is dark.”

  “What do you mean dark?”

  “Well, it was in the middle of Sinai, which doesn’t have many phone masts for triangulation, so it could be out of range – maybe it went off the highway.”

  “He would not have left the highway,” said Tassels, who in truth had no idea whether his colleague, with all his intellectual challenges, might have left the highway.

  “The phone could just be flat?” said the tech.

  “He has a charger in his car,” said Tassels. “I’ve seen it.”

  “Hmm …” the tech gave a doubtful grumble. “I can see you tried to call this number several times and he did not answer.”

  Tassels began to experience a mild sensation of panic. Traceability. He should never have involved the tech unit. They now know he was aware that his sidekick was in Sinai. If the big idiot was executed by extremists with that phone in his pocket, he would have a lot of questions to answer. He hung up his own phone without another word. Tassels closed his eyes at his own stupidity. He had to work things out, but one thought did occur to him: if you want a job done right, do it yourself.

  The coastguard looked confused, Sam’s mouth fell open, Isla was left speechless. The carabinieri to Sam’s left tried to seize control but it was clear that everyone in a position of authority was unsure as to who was most senior.

  The coastguard translated for the cop. “Migrants must go to detention centre. We find someone to take this child.”

  “Well,” said Sam, a dreadful but familiar calm descending upon him, “that’s not going to happen, chaps.”

  Isla instinctively stepped back and the coastguard made the mistake of grabbing her. The policemen holding Sam’s arms were forced together as Sam lunged from their relaxed grip. They were too slow to react and the coastguard’s face exploded. Sam withdrew his forehead, Isla moved swiftly away and the injured man fell back into one of the pews. He wasn’t unconscious, but he wasn’t about to get up either.

  The renewed tugging on Sam’s arms made it easier to release himself. He’d already twisted his hands in the cable tie giving the necessary leverage to open his wrists and snap the plastic shackle. The power in his shoulders was incredible – muscle memory from lugging GPMGs for dozens of miles, thousands of chin-ups and carrying a bergen for half his adult life. His strength had been topped up by winching and sanding and working above his head. The two young cops didn’t stand a chance.

  “Isla, turn away!” he shouted as he went to work on the two carabinieri.

  They went down easily with only one broken arm and a possible snapped collarbone. Sam meant them no ill will – they were just doing their job. He tucked them up in their own cable ties, double wrapped, wrists and feet. Nicely packaged. The coastguard was out of his depth and scared. He too was trussed up, his radio removed and treated to a hefty boot in the chest for having reached at Isla.

  And then there was a problem: what next? Sam fell to his knees and put his arms around Isla who was strangely completely calm.

  “You’ve got blood on your head, Daddy,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Don’t get it on my t-shirt.”

  He laughed. “I won’t, darlin’.” In the moment he found it helpful but disturbing that she hadn’t seemed fazed by the violence.

  Sam then turned to the ungrateful bloody woman who had so easily forsaken him.

  Habid watched the doctor’s deviousness flourish with every visit. It gave him pleasure to see the doc’s confidence build because it created opportunity: a cocky customer is ripe for the plucking.

  “He is screwed,” said the doctor, “the interrogator—”

  “The butcher,” corrected Habid.

  “Big Suit,” settled the doctor, “is still missing and Tassels does not know what to do. He’s driving a car, far as I can tell, with no real cash on him, so my cousin is starting to doubt whether he will be able to pick up the boat or pay for it if he ever does turn up.”

  “Good,” said Habid. “So Tassels thinks he needs another plan if he is to get in on the next trip to sea?”

  “Indeed.”

  “When the time comes, tell him Nuweiba. That’s where he can get the boat. At the ferry port.”

  “OK,” said the doctor.

  “And what about you?” probed Habid. “Are you ready for the next trip to sea?”

  “As a passenger?”

  “As a passenger,” confirmed Habid.

  “I think I am,” said the doctor.

  “Have you the money?”

  The doctor faltered. “Money? You have the cheek to ask me for money after saving you and preparing the ground for you to be released?” he hissed, incandescent.

  Habid cracked a menacing smile. “Don’t worry, we have a deal, doctor. The money is not for me. It is for you when you get to the other side, to set up, to begin again, as it were.”

  The doctor calmed down a little. “Well, yes, I shall be fine in that regard.”

  “And your medical qualifications, they are in order?”

  “Of course,” said the doctor, knowing full well that they weren’t.

  “Then aboard you shall be,” said Habid, affecting as eloquent a tone as he knew how, “provided you can get me out of here to make the necessary arrangements. I need to get others to join you, including your captain. It makes the trip more … economical.”

  “You put a captain on board?”

  “Generally a fisherman. Someone who knows the sea and boats. From Senegal. They are the best candidates – their rates are reduced slightly. They keep the process safe.”

  Which was true, up to a point.

  “Why did you not just tell them that we’d rescued you?” Sam snarled in a barely audible hiss, livid with the woman.

  She stared at him, cold. “You sent us away with him.”

  It struck Sam that of the two of them she was somehow the
more angry. “I came back,” he said dismissively, “as soon as I knew he wasn’t your husband.”

  “What is difference if he was husband? You are seeing how he is treat-ed me.”

  “That’s how it is where you come from.”

  She just stared at him, unable to speak further. He had seldom seen such rage in someone’s face, the injustice of which incensed him. But he had to think, to find a way out of the immediate mess.

  Sam and the police were way beyond the point of reasoning. How many of their colleagues knew where they were? What or who had brought them to the church and was that person still around? And when were these men expected back at their station? Sam had no control over so many variables – their radios or phones could be buzzing within moments, without answer. And where was Sinbad? He’d be happy to leave the woman and take the child, but they were an inseparable package. His boat was out of the water, and, in any case, it was built for endurance not speed. Any fast inflatable would be on them within minutes.

  What were his advantages? Well, he reckoned, the cops had no reason to suspect that he’d arrived by boat. The coastguard’s presence was an irritation but he calculated that the police would assume he was the collection agent for the migrants, not the delivery man. They were more likely, therefore, to determine that he’d arrived by car to take them to their next destination. So he thought that if he left by car, they would look inland. Only problem with that was he didn’t have a car.

  The disadvantages were that he’d told the coastguard he was Irish and he’d told the crane man he was Irish, and that wouldn’t take long to piece together. He didn’t want people crawling all over the boat. There was almost one hundred grand in notes in the bilge and he didn’t want to have to explain where it had come from. He looked up again at the woman, which stirred her from thought and re-ignited the argument.

  “What you know of where I come from?” she rasped in rage.

  “I know husbands don't always respect their wives. That’s what I thought was going on.”

  “What you know of how my husband treat-ed me?”

  “Well, where is your husband?” asked Sam, exasperated, but even as he said it he instinctively knew the answer.

  It came quietly. “His body was with me when you take us from sea.”

  “There are things I need to know, Habid,” said the doctor, who had drawn up a seat beside his patient’s makeshift bed.

  “There are things you want to know, doctor, but that does not mean you need to know them.”

  The doctor was becoming familiar, exhausted even, with Habid’s superior tone. It was as if the rat relished his ability to hold officials at his mercy despite being mutilated and susceptible to their whim. If the doctor decided to cut the fluids or dose the rat, he would die. Infection, the doctor would call it, and nobody would really be able to counter that. Yet the rat had knowledge the doctor wanted, that Tassels needed, and which he had been prepared to take to his bloody grave with him. The doc stared at the invalid and decided he had to give him credit. The little Libyan had balls, well, one but it was big.

  “So indulge me,” said the doctor, adopting the florid language of his uneducated but street-smart companion.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “When I get on the boat and the Senegalese captain drives us to sea, what guarantee have I of being picked up?”

  “None. No guarantee, but it is extremely likely you will be picked up,” the rat paused, “one way or another.”

  “By an NGO, to go to Europe.”

  “Yes.”

  “What if it’s someone else. The Egyptian navy might intercept us.”

  “Unlikely, but possible.” Images of the doctor’s corpse floating face down, arms flapping slowly to the rhythm of the waves filled his mind. “Some navy or customs boat could pick you up.”

  “And what would happen then?”

  Habid saw an opportunity. “Well, you would be taken to a holding centre – maybe in Egypt, maybe in Libya. You would be detained indefinitely unless you have documents to show you are Egyptian and they see you are a doctor. If you carry your bank details, then maybe you can buy your freedom.”

  The doctor didn’t like the sound of that but noted how the rat seemed to take energy from the suggestion as if it pleased him.

  “And how many of your boats get intercepted by the authorities.”

  “None,” lied Habid, “so far.”

  He had no idea what happened to the boats he’d sent to sea. His business was a work in progress refining all the time, which was why he’d altered the plan for the most recent journey – to get more bang for his buck, as the Americans might say.

  “But the plan is to be picked up by a European boat?”

  “Of course.”

  “And what do I do when I get to Europe?”

  “Escape,” said Habid, “as fast as you can if you have any sense. You do not want to enter the asylum system, do you?”

  The doctor thought for a moment. “What is the alternative?”

  “You need money and an identity. That is why I suggest you have access to money when you get there. Your cash card, your credit card, your bank details. You need to assume an identity of a doctor.”

  “Well, you see, therein lies a problem.”

  “I was waiting for this,” said Habid. “You don’t have your papers, do you?”

  “I still have my original qualifications but any new employer will want a reference, won’t they? They will want to call a hospital and confirm that I worked there. That I am reliable.”

  “And you are not reliable, are you, doctor?” sang Habid.

  “I am a good doctor.”

  “Not the same thing,” said Habid.

  “So my question is, how do the other people you … well, help, how do they create new lives?”

  “There will be clever people looking for migrants like you. Spend a few pounds, ask around. The best way is to take a dead person’s identity then move to the next country with their passport and driving licence and get the medical documents in order and begin again.”

  “But they will check references with the dead doctor’s past employers.”

  “Then we will need to find you a doctor – maybe here in Egypt, maybe in Libya from my flock. A good doctor. Someone more respectable than you.”

  The doc thought again. “But any European employer will ask for that doctor’s references and they will discover he is still in Egypt or Libya?”

  Habid smiled his disturbing smile. “Not if the doctor vanished without trace. In that case the hospital will be glad to hear their missing doctor has turned up safe and well, albeit in Europe.”

  Sam favoured the police car – small and easier to fit into a garage or lockup, but he realised there was no choice. He had to take the coastguard van.

  “Where’s the boat, the one you came ashore in?” he snapped at the woman, gruff, grudging.

  “Is over.” She pointed at the rocks, seeming to have adopted a truce of sorts. That he didn’t appear intent on leaving her to the delights of a detention centre probably helped.

  Sam walked to the water’s edge and stared down at his tender, banging precariously against the sharp outcrop. It was floating at least, which meant he could probably repair any damage. His calculations were done in an instant and he bounded down, stepped aboard and quickly spun off the turning bolts that secured the engine. He hoisted the outboard onto his shoulder and returned to the coastguard van laying the motor gently inside. Then he made the same trip with the fuel tank before, at the outside limit of his strength, heaving the boat onto his back. Sam stumbled and fell all the way up to the car park, but the boat slid into the van nicely.

  The woman watched him, her foot jamming the door of the church allowing her to keep one eye on the captives. Sam walked in past her and wrestled the coastguard’s coat and vest from him, re-securing new cable ties. The man didn’t even attempt to struggle, which Sam thought pretty poor. He then helped all three m
en to their feet and using the tiny church as cover from anyone who happened to walk along the little road, pushed them into the back of the van.

  “Isla, you’re coming with me.” He turned to the woman and her daughter. “You and Sadiqah stay here, in the confessional, quiet. I’ll be back soon.”

  “You will not come back,” she said.

  Sam realised he was within earshot of the men and took his opportunity. “I am going to get the car, then we will make for the mainland and get off this bloody island.” He stared hard at her, willing her to take on his deceit.

  If she understood what he was doing, she didn’t show it. “You will leaving us here,” she said scornfully.

  “I came here for you, didn’t I?” he asked.

  She appeared to have no answer to that. She just stared at him.

  “Why would I do that if I wanted to just abandon you here?”

  “Leave girl here,” she said, motioning at Isla, “if you are true.”

  “There is no way I will leave her. That’s just the way it is. Now, if you want to go into custody, fill your boots, love. Scream and shout and get me stopped. But if you want to get away from here, get in the fucking confessional.”

  “What is confessional?”

  Sam all but dragged her inside the church, to the booth, where he flung the door open and told her to sit still and shut up. Then he marched outside, swept Isla up into the front seat and started driving up the coast. Once they were moving the men started kicking and making noise. Sam was curious as to what had suddenly got into them given that they’d been so unusually compliant up to that point, but he didn’t care. The place was a ghost coast – there was nobody to hear them.

  Four miles north he found a deserted beach with an apparently abandoned shack and drove the van some way onto the sand, turning it so that its inhabitants wouldn’t be seen from the road. He slung open the doors and pulled out the little rigid inflatable, this time resting it on the sand and securing the outboard engine and fuel tank, which was less than a quarter full. The coastguard had what smelled like unleaded petrol in a jerrycan bungeed to the side of his van. It would have to do.