The Sea and the Sand

by Finn Óg

  “Why did you want the big cop’s phone and GPS destroyed?” Sam asked, the notion occurring to him as the road rolled by.

  “I do not want police to know I arrest him,” said Waleed. “I think they may be tracing phone.”

  “Why didn’t you want them to know?”

  “I have no reason to arresting him. My job is intelligence. Jihadi information. Is not my business to arresting police officers.”

  “So why did you arrest him?”

  “Is good question,” said Waleed. “He once friend at academy.”

  “You said before.”

  “He call-ed me from desert. He tell me he see fire in front of him. I thinking maybe he is looking at ISIL camp or some jihadi, so I track-ed his phone and I see I have unit of soldier one mile close to him. So I send.”

  “You were doing him a favour?”

  “Pier-haps. Then I question him. Hard. I threat him. Is not normal for policeman from Alexandria to be in Sinai. He tell me he on way to pick up boat for traffick people. Then I get mad and I leave him in compound.”

  “So you didn’t want the police to come sniffing around your area?”

  “Sniffing?”

  “Hunting for him, looking for him.”

  “Exact. Sinai is already dangerous. No need for police also to be cause problems.”

  “I’m not going to kill him, Waleed,” Sam said, rushing out what had been on his mind for miles. He didn’t know what Waleed expected of him but he hoped it wasn’t that.

  “Good, Sam Ireland,” Waleed said. “I like-ed that big fool very much, long time ago. He is idiot, but he is like hammer. It is carpenter is real problem.”

  The doctor watched with horror from his shared mattress as the guard he’d paid for the use of a phone was shackled and slapped and led away.

  Of course his concern wasn’t the guard’s welfare, but his own. Had someone seen their transaction? Other inmates had no doubt spotted him using the mobile phone but surely such transgressions were commonplace – this was a kind of prison after all.

  The doctor lay back and tried not to panic but he knew it was only a matter of time.

  Sam had literally sailed through many borders but the ease with which Waleed negotiated the Egyptian–Libyan checkpoints was impressive. He’d made a number of phone calls well ahead of time. When they came to the militarised zones he simply redialled a number he’d stored on his handset and handed the phone to the soldiers as they stooped down to ask for ID. Each heard whoever was on the other end of the line issue brief instructions before the mobile phone was respectfully handed back to Waleed and the car waved on.

  “Your counterpart?” Sam asked.

  “Yes,” said Waleed, his mind focused on the road in front, wary of what lay ahead.

  The doctor turned to find a boot testing the spring of his mattress. His head was being gently coaxed up and down. He shuddered when he saw the boot belonged not to one of the centre’s guards but to a solider who was flanked by another. Both were armed with rifles.

  They’ve got me, he thought. My cousin, the dog, has told them what I did in Egypt.

  “Get up.”

  The doctor was a bleeder not a fighter. He was never going to resist. He rose meekly and with his head hung in guilt was escorted between the two soldiers to the door.

  They made their way through a warren of corridors but all the doctor could do was stare at the heels of the solider in front. The boots halted and moved to the side, another door was opened and he was propelled inside by the shoulder.

  He was astonished at the first person he set eyes on. Big Suit, a shadow of his former self, sat in an ill-chosen plastic chair with all the ease an adult might sit in a primary school chair.

  Exhausted as Sam and Waleed were, they noticed the mutual recognition.

  “I see you know one another.” Waleed tested the detainee’s English.

  A flicker from the doctor showed he’d understood. Big Suit looked as vacant as ever.

  “Sit down, please,” Waleed remained polite, and the doctor settled nervously into his seat as if convinced it would be whisked from behind him by one of the soldiers.

  “I am head of Egyptian Military Intelligence in the Sinai region. This gentleman is from Europe,” he gestured with his thumb over his shoulder. “And you know this man.” Waleed pointed to Big Suit. To his amazement the doctor nodded to confirm their acquaintance.

  Waleed’s anticipation grew as the dynamics of the situation ricocheted around the room like a pinball. He decided to coax out the story by giving the impression he knew what was going on.

  “I will be very clear. We do not have lot of time. For you, is good if you tell us truth fast. Understand?”

  The doctor nodded vigorously.

  “You tell us truth, we try to hel-ep you.” It had crossed Waleed’s mind that this refugee might simply be some unfortunate victim of the trafficking ring. “Tell us how you know this man.”

  The doctor looked at Big Suit and then at the ground. “I used to do work for him. For his boss, really.”

  Waleed tried to hide his surprise and remain collected. Sam was taken with the man’s obvious grasp of English.

  “What work please?” Waleed asked.

  “They … they used to torture people in the jail. I am a doctor. They used to hurt people and I would help them.”

  “Hel-ep them hurt people?” Waleed asked.

  “No!” said the doctor. “Help the people they injured. He was dangerous,” he nodded to Big Suit. “I’m amazed he is still alive.”

  “Why?” Waleed asked.

  “Because the last time I saw him he was donating blood to one of his own victims. Too much blood.”

  Everyone looked at Big Suit who had no idea what they were saying and was rather abashed to be observed in triplicate.

  “Continue,” said Waleed, eager not to betray his ignorance.

  “He had cutters for breaking chains and locks.” The doctor made a motion as if pruning a hedge.

  Big Suit sat up a little straighter suddenly understanding what the doctor was saying. A look of alarm crossed his face.

  “The last man, he cut him terribly. I had to seal the wound.”

  “Cut him how?”

  “He snipped off his toe and then …” the doctor spoke more softly, “his testicular area.”

  Both English speakers scrunched up their eyes and tightened their lips.

  “He is an animal,” said the doctor.

  Sam leaned forward and whispered in Waleed’s ear.

  “What was name of victim?”

  “Habid,” said the doctor.

  “Bingo,” said Sam.

  The analyst ran through to his boss with a piece of paper fresh from the printer.

  “Message from America, sir. The two men – they are here!” he spluttered excitedly.

  “What men, where?”

  “The British naval officer and the Egyptian chief,” he said. “They are in Tobruk.”

  “I know,” said his boss.

  “You know?”

  “I secured their entry at the border,” said the boss.

  “Why?” asked the analyst, keen to show he was eager to learn.

  “Because it is useful to know where people are. If they tell us, then it is easier to track them and see what they are up to.”

  “I see,” said the analyst, but he didn’t see at all.

  To the minute, it took one hour to empty the doctor’s head of all he knew about Habid’s trafficking route. He gushed out the details – how the rat had a list and biographies of wealthy Gaddafi insiders. How he’d hidden them somewhere and how he rationed their departures. He told them about his evil little cousin and how the rat had outfoxed him to make him a labourer in the scheme rather than the leader of it. He issued dire warnings about the rat’s cunning and intelligence. The doc described the route as best he could – the different border crossings and the pickups performed by his cousin with the help of some corrupt police off
icers.

  “So,” said Sam, still pinching himself that they’d made such progress, “where can we find him?”

  For the first time the doctor looked blank. “I do not know,” he said, mildly shocked at his own answer.

  “Then we cannot hel-ep you,” said Waleed almost regretfully.

  The doctor began to panic. “You have all the information. Everything. This is all I know. You must be able to find him from what I have said!”

  “All you have told is that he keeps people in desert. Do you know how big desert is?”

  The doctor was truly lost for words.

  Waleed nodded to the solitary soldier. The man rose and made for action.

  “Shukran,” Waleed said, and then the screaming and pleading started and the doctor was hit a thump and dragged from the room.

  Waleed turned to Sam who shrugged.

  “I think we know where he keeps them.”

  “Yes, I think we do.”

  “Wonder if there’s room in the desert for a large one?”

  Both men looked at Big Suit who was utterly zoned out.

  “No,” said Waleed. “I have enough of dragging him around behind us. We have just heard from doctor what this man has become. He was prepar-ed to send peoples to drown – to make refugee. Let us now make him refugee. We will leave him here.”

  Áine was more than halfway to blind drunk when Sinead got the text:

  Am low on battery. We know the trafficking route. Going to try to track down the man that sent Alea to sea. Does Áine know any more about why she was sacked? Could be important.

  “Áine, it’s Sam. He’s asking do you know any more about the hack, or who it might have been?”

  Her twin turned to her and enunciated her vowels very clearly for a woman so smashed.

  “Tell Sam to go an’ fuck himself,” she said.

  Not really, Sam, Sinead typed. Then she thought a while. Then typed again.

  Take care, let me know.

  “So now we have problem,” Waleed said to Sam.

  “How to get into the desert? I know,” said Sam.

  “No. Other problem.”

  “What?”

  “Libyan intelligence know where we are.”

  “Sure they’ve known since we came into the country. You told them, didn’t you? That’s how we got through the roadblocks, aye?”

  “Yes, they also know why we are here.”

  “How?”

  “If I have Libyan intelligence in my country, I bug room. Also, we have phone in pocket. You have phone in pocket. They know.”

  Sam reckoned he had a point.

  “Is big problem, really,” said Waleed, who seemed remarkably relaxed given the magnitude of what he was about to describe. “We take a walk.”

  They led Big Suit like a bear on a chain at a circus, opened the door into the warehouse at the end of the corridor and pushed him inside with all the other refugees. They then left the way they’d come, emerging onto a not very busy street. Waleed took his phone from his pocket and placed it on a windowsill, Sam followed suit and they both walked thirty yards up the road.

  “New government in Libya,” Waleed said.

  “Yes.”

  “Not like Gaddafi or Gaddafi people.”

  Sam was following the drift. “They will want to find Habid themselves.”

  Waleed shook his head. “They will not care about rat. They will want Gaddafi’s people – his circle. They will hang them in the streets.”

  Sam could see that. “Then we need to get there first.”

  “They will follow us.”

  “Does that matter?”

  Waleed swayed his head. “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “It’s worth a go,” Sam suggested.

  “Ok. We will need map, GPS. Good vehicle.”

  They looked at Waleed’s Mazda.

  “Better vehicle.”

  “Yes,” said Sam.

  “Easy way is to do with Libya.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We tell them what we plan.”

  “But we only want Habid?”

  “So we make deal.”

  “They give us Habid and what they do with the others is their own business?”

  “Yes,” said Waleed.

  Sam thought of Alea and Sadiqah. “No, Waleed. There are women and children there. Wherever there is.”

  “Ok,” shrugged Waleed. “What is plan?”

  “We hedge.”

  The analyst scribbled the information from the long-range desert group with widening eyes. His skin stretched around his skull as more and more detail was relayed. He hung up the phone and ran through to his boss’s office.

  “I have the latest from the team at the coordinates you gave me.”

  “Sir,” barked the boss.

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

  “What is it?”

  The analyst began to read his own scribbles.

  “Twenty-two people, sir, living underground, sir. They are surviving in a wadi, sir.”

  “Hurry up,” barked the boss.

  “Yes, some have papers, sir, in preparation for leaving Libya.”

  “Who are they?”

  “The captain says they are what remains of Gaddafi’s inner circle and their families, sir.”

  To the analyst’s amazement the boss simply nodded.

  “Thank you. Let me know if you hear anything else.”

  “Do you not want the names, sir?”

  But the boss was already reaching for his phone, so the analyst gently set the piece of paper at his side and tiptoed out of the room. He didn’t even get to tell him that a small group had recently left the bunker.

  Sam had done his desert training. He could navigate, he could drive and he could hike. He had suffered the Brecon Beacons and all Wales could throw at him during the height of summer and the harshest of winter. That was what special forces training was partly about: endurance, but it was also about guile, wit, sense and knowing how to crack the toughest of nuts. The Libyan desert was one such nut.

  In classrooms he’d learned about the exploits of the original SAS, the pioneers who’d cut their teeth on this very terrain. His own personal hero, Blair Mayne from Northern Ireland, had been one of the toughest SAS troopers the force had ever seen. They’d conducted incredible attacks on Italian and German airfields throughout Libya during World War ΙΙ, ferocious fighters doing the bravest of work. They’d ranged into unmapped territory aboard failing vehicles with crap kit and only the sun and stars to guide them. It had taken weeks, sometimes months.

  So Sam flew.

  It had taken a sizeable withdrawal from Waleed and a few goes at the ATM for Sam to gather the funds but the rest was relatively straightforward. Tobruk airfield didn’t offer day trips or flying lessons but it had helicopters and a few would-be pilots. For the cost of heli-hire and fuel they appeared only too keen to up their air miles ahead of qualification. Sam didn’t inquire too far into their actual ability but within two hours he was airborne and headed towards the coordinates on Habid’s GPS in his hand.

  The pilot was excitable and irritating, keen on swooping and showing off. Nine miles out Sam had to bark at him over the hubbub to stop fucking around, but his voice was outstripped by the boom of two fighter jets screaming far overhead.

  Sam’s heart sank as he suddenly realised what was about to happen.

  “Turn!” he shouted, sending his skipper into what was almost a tailspin. “Calm down, sorry, son. Calm down. Get the aircraft steady and turn around. Go back now. Tobruk, yes? Tobruk.”

  The young man got his shit together and cut a steady curve to head back north-east.

  “You are about to hear something shocking, ok? It will be ok. Just get us back to Tobruk, do you understand?”

  The pilot just kept nodding.

  “Get us there as quickly as you can, ok?” Sam’s voice had lowered to a soothing but authoritative register, coaxing the kid to keep his head and get them back sa
fely.

  And then came the explosions.

  “Eyes front, son,” he said, using two fingers on his right hand to gesture to his own eyeballs and then point ahead. And then Sam turned to catch the remains of the fireball that had been generated in the middle of nowhere.

  He closed his eyes and prayed that what had just happened wasn’t as a result of what he and Waleed had done, but he knew deep down that was the most likely reason Habid’s flock had just been cremated.

  Sinead was trying to sleep when she got an encrypted message on the app:

  Áine correct about hack. Any danger now passed. They have what they wanted. Sorry. Really. Sam.

  Twenty Four

  Sam had three days – and enough anger for three decades.

  Waleed hurtled across the highway, this time convoyed by two open-bed jeeps each equipped with a general-purpose machine gun and two armed soldiers in the back. Whatever deal he’d struck with his counterpart in Libyan intelligence, it seemed they wanted rid of Waleed and Sam just as much as Waleed and Sam wanted to get out of Libya.

  Big Suit had been left on a mattress at the detention centre wearing the same clothes he’d had on for three months. There’d been some initial resistance but the soldiers had become incredibly agreeable with the handover of cash.

  Neither man said anything for a very long time. They were of the same mind – the law of unintended consequences. Both understood that they’d miscalculated, that they’d become involved in matters that had wider, perhaps even global, implications. Both now understood that of course there were people who wanted Gaddafi’s insiders incinerated. The new Libyan administration weren’t fans, for sure, but there were others too – those who had managed or run informants within the regime, those who manipulated the leader in from the cold to the benefit of the west.

  Both Sam and Waleed knew they’d started a chain of events that had led to the identification of the hideout. They’d have to live with that and therefore the deaths of whoever had been stashed in the desert.