The Price of Life

by Nigel Brennan

  ‘This is an email to our family; it’s not like it’s some highly confidential piece of intel,’ I spit out. I want to add, because we don’t get told that sort of thing anyway.

  ‘Nicky,’ says Brian, ‘the sheets contain information regarding our strategies and what is going on. We can get scrutinised later on regarding our operational security. You’re missing the big point: you are the core family.’

  ‘No,’ I say to him, just ahead of Mum. ‘There are two other family members.’

  Gordon continues, ‘You have no control over information after you pass it on. We are trusting you, but if you’re sending it on a public server, it’s not safe.’

  ‘We would much rather you discuss things over a landline phone – not a mobile,’ says Brian.

  ‘Well, that’s not going to work,’ I say. ‘Ham’s only got a mobile.’

  ‘Well,’ says Gordon, ‘perhaps you can discuss options for calling him on a public payphone at a certain time.’

  What planet are these people from? Ham lives 15 kilometres out of Grafton – 15 kilometres away from the nearest payphone.

  The conversation peters out with no conclusion.

  Dad then raises the fact that Brian’s predecessor had asked the family to supply a figure for how much they could afford to contribute to the release amount. ‘I called Amanda’s folks to see if they were asked the same thing. I got a generic response: that they were putting all their faith in the RCMP and their government.’ We’d actually given Dad a bit of a roasting about the lack of information he was able to extract from Lorinda, accusing him of being a bloody pushover. Ham then rang them back to get a simple yes-or-no answer: do they have anything to contribute? The answer was no. I think they’ve been told Nige and Amanda can be released without a payment.

  Brian responds with, ‘There will be things that will happen at different ends at different times. How Lorinda deals with money is her own private business. Let’s move this into the future; let’s not look into the past.’

  ‘Can I raise an issue?’ says Gordon. ‘Here is the most important thing about a ransom. Paying the ransom is not always the solution.’

  ‘Do you have more information on ransom amounts that have previously been paid in Somalia?’ I ask.

  ‘From zero to in excess of a million dollars.’

  ‘So, why don’t we go in with more money?’ asks Dad. So far we’ve only offered US$31K.

  ‘It’s a lawless society,’ responds Gordon. ‘Nigel and Amanda are a commodity. If other people in the country see them as highly valued then we risk them being passed on. Another group may say, “Get what you can for them and then pass them to us and we’ll get more and give you some of it.” If it were as simple as just paying ransom, it would’ve been done by now. That’s why we’re keeping it low.’

  ‘But thirty-one thousand?’ responds Mum incredulously.

  Gordon replies, ‘If we offered them more money, it wouldn’t work. Until they do something good, we can’t offer them any more. They may say, “Give us another thirty thousand”, and we can say we’ve got three thousand nine hundred dollars. That shows them we don’t have much money. If we came in with, say, forty thousand, they would expect that we’re rich Australians who can get two-and-a-half million dollars. We have to get inside their heads and reduce their expectations. If they think they can get more out of you, they will.’

  This statement doesn’t make much sense to me: I see bugger-all difference between thirty and forty thousand.

  ‘We want to run them down until the only option left is to let them go,’ says Gordon.

  ‘There is nothing that you or we can do that will force harm on them. We need you to understand that. If they are harmed, that was in the kidnappers’ minds the whole time. It could also be victim-precipitated; they might try to escape or attack them. It would not be the fact that Nic was hostile on the phone or we don’t have any money. We have to ask you to understand this. The end game gets tough, especially for the NOK negotiators and that’s when you need to trust us and cooperate. We may not have time for family conferences and such.’

  The bit I cling to is that nothing we do will bring about harm. I’ve been scared all along of doing something that will get them killed.

  I sigh and ask, ‘How long do we wait? How long does it take before we get a resolution?’

  Brian’s answer is along the lines of dealing with averages.

  Gordon’s is, ‘We just don’t know when this will end, and we would lose credibility with you if we presumed to tell you.’

  We have researched previous kidnappings in Somalia: they have lasted between six and nine weeks. We’re up to week seven, and we seem a long way off a good result.

  The conversation has pretty much exhausted itself – and us. At the end of the meeting when we have bundled ourselves downstairs to farewell everyone, Gordon places a hand on my dad’s shoulder, shakes his hand, pulls him towards him and pats his back with a quick release. A bloke hug.

  ‘I’m telling you now, Geoff, we will bring your boy home.’ It’s a touching scene and it brings tears to my eyes. Team Nigel needs to believe this is true.

  Despite some dead-ends, we are all thankful that someone has finally taken the time to see us and tell us in some detail how this kidnapping gig will pan out. It’s not until we sit down and read over our scribbled notes that we start to feel a little bit railroaded; admittedly, it’s done with a velvet glove and good intentions.

  I reckon if we’d had this guy talk to us from day one we would be like Lorinda – full of faith in the authorities – but we’ve been left in the dark for a little too long.

  Tuesday, 14 October

  The deadline of the sixteenth hits the media and we discover it, as usual, via Google alert. No warning from Canberra. They are supposed to be on this twenty-four hours a day, right? I ring Emily at DFAT. Her response is that she didn’t know the family would want to be notified of every breaking news story.

  Isn’t she our media-liaison person? What does she do? I think, Write polite little family statements and that’s it? If so, I want her job: all care and no responsibility. She said she wasn’t sure if this would ‘add to the stresses of the family’. I reply very tersely that I would rather know from her than log on to the computer and see headlines stating that Nige will be dead in a few days’ time.

  ‘Perhaps we need to ascertain and document what everyone’s roles are, rather than what we perceive them to be,’ Emily says to me. Oh goody, more bureaucratic paperwork bullshit that just makes people look busy. I can feel my blood boiling and have to get off the phone before I lose control. Surely someone in the DFAT office is hooked up to Google alert?

  That evening the negs pass on from Canberra that it won’t happen again. Yeah, right, inshallah.

  Thursday, 16 October

  I wake up on deadline day feeling like I could lose it at any moment. I spend the day eyeing off the NOK phone. I’m grateful it stays silent.

  Monday, 20-Sunday, 26 October

  By the twenty-first the MIR has moved down to Canberra. It’s no longer the MIR (Major Incident Room); it’s now called the ICC (Incident Coordination Centre). The move was announced on the seventeenth by the negs (‘We need to look at flexibility and review the MIR in Brisbane. It doesn’t have ongoing support for twenty-four-hour operation but we do in Canberra’); they were clear there was no room for discussion about it. Brian’s no longer on the scene, and we have a new guy running the show – Ben. He called to introduce himself. The negs think pretty highly of him.

  It takes a while longer for us to warm to Ben. We are all a little wary of new faces, especially those who come from the upper echelons. But there are indications that he’s not a bad sort.

  Around the twenty-fourth we hear that a lot of calls are going through to Lorinda from Adan. She has got him to take some new POL questions and has emailed them to him as well. She tells us he was reluctant until she became emotional; then it was like he wanted to placate
her. She has also recieved a marriage proposal from the grub. How sleazy is that?

  The strategy is now that Lorinda takes all calls because of her strong rapport with Adan. If I get a call, I’m to defer it to Dave in Nairobi.

  Both Lorinda and I get a call on the twenty-sixth. It’s a shocking line and the content of the call is bugger-all. Adan is talking really fast and he’s difficult to understand. He is venting but not aggressively so. He has changed phone lines and is trying to give me the new number.

  He says Amanda and Nigel are sick but it is not the same illness as before; last time they were sick in the stomach. I can make out Adan saying, ‘I don’t know the English word; they have itch. Amanda has eye illness, sore eyes.’ Then he suddenly changes tack.

  ‘Your husband, what does he do? ’

  I freeze. This is a fishing exercise.

  ‘He, ah, he works with his hands on the land, you understand?’

  I don’t want to say he works on a farm lest Adan thinks the farm is a valuable asset we can sell. It’s an asset but a fully mortgaged one, and I have no idea how to explain that to him.

  Thumbs up, and ‘nice save’ mouthed by the neg next to me.

  He then asks to marry me.

  ‘Adan,’ I say. ‘I am very old. I am Nigel’s older sister.’ Time to change the subject.

  ‘Adan, we have put a medical package together for you.’

  ‘Ah, Miss Nicky, the money is finishing on the phone. Call me tomorrow. Call me on this number after 10 a.m. tomorrow.’

  There’s been a real flurry of activity: ten calls and two emails in the last four days. We are all getting hopeful that this signals the pendulum is finally swinging in our direction. I am not allowed to call back but Lorinda does and under Nairobi’s instructions offers him an increased amount – US$35K. Adan then asks if he can marry Amanda. Double yuck.

  Lorinda gives me a thorough run-down of her calls when I ring her. Adan is acting paranoid, claiming we are working with another group in Egypt. He’s constantly saying that both Nigel and Amanda are sick, with some ailments that are the same and some that differ. Amanda’s eyes are very bad, and she has no appetite and is ‘dismoral’ (we assume this means depressed); Nigel has a cough. Adan is pissed off with Mark and Dave in Nairobi, calling them ‘liar men’. He calls them ‘brokers’ and seems to be really upset about being regarded as a broker himself. This is considered some kind of insult.

  Lorinda eventually gets Adan’s full name so we can send a care package to him. Lorinda asks if there is anything else Nigel and Amanda need, such as clothes. His reply is that they have clothes but she should send eye drops and for entertainment.

  ‘It’s been about seven weeks since I spoke to Nigel, and we’re all getting leery that we’ve had no POL since the video. Mum’s away at the moment and her response to the recent activity is to tell Alli (the neg that’s now on) that until she gets a POL she will not be nice. It doesn’t matter how many phone calls are coming into Canada or Nairobi, ‘I will hound them till I have a POL from my son.’ Well, they can’t say they haven’t been warned. I feel a bit bad putting Alli on the spot like this as she’s a good laugh and in the real world (as opposed to our bizarre reality where we are all living in kidnap land) she’s the sort of person I would probably be friends with.

  The day after this we get a call from Lorinda. Adan has spoken to the group finally. No POL. The group, he tells her, is angry and do not want to answer questions.

  Reece has now swapped over with Dave, and is about to move to the Nairobi cell. There’s not much love lost there. Reece is the one who whinged about the family emailing the discussion points, and now he’s representing us. Dave introduced Reece to Adan and then came back home; his thirty days are up.

  It takes a bit of effort for Reece to get onto Adan. When he finally does, he asks if Adan has taken the newest figure – $38 300 – to the group. Adan’s response is that he is not prepared to discuss that low an amount. He finishes the conversation with ‘if no money, you should find their bodies’. Charming.

  So now Nairobi is ‘renewing’ its strategies. They do not want Lorinda or me to contact Adan during this time. Reece, I’m guessing, has a pretty reasonable idea that we are not happy he’s representing us in Nairobi, but it appears he’s an astute negotiator. He sends a thank-you note to us via the negs for an idea we had: to include gifts for Adan’s children in the care package. We have sent them stuffed toys: a koala, a roo, a moose and a polar bear.

  Thursday, 30 October

  We have another fly-in, fly-out visit from DFAT and the AFP. It’s a pretty ordinary meeting: A big chunk of it is about the health and welfare of the officers up here and in Nairobi. It has become apparent to all that the whole exercise is taking longer than expected and it’s getting pretty costly. This is not actually said plainly to us; it’s ensconced in phrases such as ‘we have to look at where we are at in regards to negotiator strategies with other government agencies’.

  They keep banging on about the reasons they moved the MIR from Brisbane to the AFP headquarters in Canberra. The ICC is purpose-built for operations; there, the SIO has instant access to the assistant commissioner and commissioner if required. The SIO can attend meetings with other agencies in person. Many of the personnel are based in Canberra and it’s more reasonable for people to work from their home location. I hear the phrase ‘availability of resources’ more times than I can count. I’m wondering where this is all heading.

  I can’t believe I’m taking down this crap in my notes. I don’t understand a word of it until I hear what I deem to be the death knell.

  ‘There are workplace health and safety issues.’

  You hear shit like that and you know something is getting wound down somewhere, and that we will not be getting any benefit from it.

  The best information we get from the entire meeting is a breakdown of the negotiator strategies in Nairobi. They are trying to find a third-party intermediary, a TPI, in Somalia.

  They are looking at ‘maximising opportunities for resolution other than Adan’, we’re told. Christ, why can’t they just say it in English? They are looking for another spokesperson to talk to the kidnappers ’cause they don’t think Adan is up to it.

  Ben, the new SIO, is here in person and discusses previous kidnapping cases in Somalia. In the last seventeen years there have been forty-two UN personnel kidnapped. Forty-one of whom were successfully released and returned. One was killed, though this is unconfirmed; it’s believed that was as a result of the hostage’s relationship with a Somali woman.

  ‘The releases were facilitated through the same avenues we are exploring,’ Ben tells us.

  Then James says something that makes my ears prick up: it is UN policy not to get involved in any payments. However, they have a long list of people they use to ‘advance negotiations’. I think what James is telling us here is that someone is paying a ransom for UN hostages but governments and the UN deny it’s them. How much must the final amount be if everyone’s denying it’s even happened? How do we find out?

  After the meeting we hear the news that the NOK phone is moving out of Mum and Dad’s place down to the Villas, a couple of kilometres down the road. I’m told that because the phone is in the Villas I should get more time at home. This doesn’t really gel, as my on-hours are 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. I’m not going to walk anywhere at 3 a.m. so I wouldn’t be heading off before about six in the morning.

  Mum thinks this means she’ll be left out of the loop and be fed less and less information.

  The Feds have obviously given Gayle a mandate to convince Mum this is the right thing to do. Gayle is great, but, really, as if that’s going to do the trick.

  It is, however, cleverly sold to her as being better for the grandkids. Gayle says there is the issue of the kids going downstairs and seeing the strategies up on the whiteboards.

  ‘I’ve heard you calling the house “Camp Evans” and that’s not good,’ says Gayle to me. In all honesty, I thought
Ham’s nod to the US military base was pretty clever and I still think it’s funny.

  We are reassured by all that nothing is set in stone; we’re told not to be afraid to say so if the situation isn’t working. That’s bullshit. Once something changes with this lot there is no going back – no matter how much they bang on about ‘flexibility’. It’s just the first stage of us being cut out altogether. We know it, but are powerless to alter it.

  Nigel

  The Light House

  Sunday, 5 October

  Ahmed’s promise to release us weighs heavily on our minds – we’re pinning all our hopes on it. With only a few days left until we reach that six-week milestone, he comes to visit. He doesn’t give us much to go on, saying that they are negotiating with Nairobi but things have ground to a halt.

  When Amanda pushes him about his promise, he completely backs down: it’s not up to him – there are others who are running the show from behind the scenes. I see a spineless, weak, pathetic creature driven solely by a lust for wealth. I don’t think I have ever detested anyone so much in my life.

  I start to realise what Ahmed’s broken promise means: money is really the only driver here and sooner rather than later they will lean on our families for the cash.

  I know the situation Amanda’s family is in; it’s clear they won’t be able to pay. I suspect it’ll all land on my family. I’m sure they won’t release me without Amanda, and I wouldn’t allow that to happen. We’ve got ourselves into this and we’re going to walk out of this shithole together.

  Tuesday, 7-Wednesday, 8 October

  We are uprooted again with only a few minutes’ warning and no explanation. It’s as terrifying as the last time, as we wonder whether they are about to execute us. We’re bundled into the backseat and I notice the boys are edgy. We weave our way down the road, nearly getting dry-bogged several times. It feels like we’ve done a massive semicircle when we finally stop outside a row of compounds. I see the stencilled pattern on the wall and realise we’re back where we started, at the filthy house, the one we were moved from three weeks earlier. We’re ordered from the car into the street before being herded through the small front gate. We’re escorted back to our original room.