Grave Island: a compelling mystery thriller

by Andrew Smyth

  Dickson put down the Truscan and crossed to the balcony and opened the patio doors. ‘Shall we find out where that boat has got to?’

  ‘There’s no point. It’s dark now and if they’ve gone in behind Wasini Island then the extrapolation of the track won’t work. Have you got any messages from your office?’

  Dickson pulled out his phone. ‘No. Nothing. I hope they got there before it got dark.’

  ‘Give them a call and find out.’ Once again I listened to Dickson’s rapid Swahili and waited impatiently for him to finish.

  He finally snapped shut his phone. ‘They got there before the dhow arrived,’ he told me. ‘But it was getting dark and as far as they could tell, she anchored somewhere between the island and the mainland. They think they’re probably waiting for daylight before unloading. He can see a faint anchor light south of the ferry dock.’

  ‘We’ll have to get back to Mombasa. When’s the first flight?’

  ‘I think it’s eight, but what about Ansaar?’

  ‘They’ll have to wait; it’s more important that we follow the consignment. They clearly didn’t believe my cover, but the main thing is that we’ve thrown up enough aerial clutter for them not to know who we really are. With any luck that will mean that they’ll continue with their operation here. We can follow it up again later.’

  We caught the early morning flight to Mombasa and as we walked across the tarmac to the arrivals hall, I noticed a fleet of planes with unusual livery.

  ‘They belong to various aid agencies and NGOs,’ Dickson said. They’re always flying supplies and staff around the continent. We joke that it’s like a private airline.’

  Outside, we picked up the hire car that Dickson had booked and headed south towards the border. ‘My colleague Juma is watching them. He went down last night but they didn’t raise their anchor until first light this morning and then went a little way down the coast. He can’t see them clearly but the office is tracking them and they seem to have run the boat up on the shore. They’re mainly hidden by the mangroves but there appears to be a faint path through them and he’s staking it out. I’ve got his position on my phone – I reckon it’ll take us about another half hour. He’ll meet us there.’

  We took the turn-off to Shimoni and headed slowly down the rutted road where we saw the thin line of casuarina trees fringing the beach ahead. Dickson indicated the man waiting under the shade of a palm tree. ‘That’s Juma, we’d better pull in here.’

  Juma came over and pointed down the narrow track which was barely more than a footpath. ‘This doesn’t go anywhere. It peters out a couple of kilometres further along in the mud flats.’

  I looked down the track. ‘Have you any idea what they’re doing down there?’

  ‘I went earlier this morning. They’re unloading the dhow onto the back of a truck. From the look of it there’re going to be several trips – there’s quite a lot to unload.’

  ‘We’ve only got to follow them once. They’ve got to come out this way so let’s get back in the car and wait.’

  They must have started unloading at first light because we didn’t have to wait long before an anonymous truck with no markings drove up and turned east along the road to Shimoni.

  We left Juma behind with his own car. I let Dickson drive and he pulled out a long way behind and kept his distance. ‘There’s only one way this road goes,’ he said, ‘so we’ll keep following until they turn off. They’re not expecting any company, so we should be okay.’

  We must have driven halfway back to Mombasa before we could see the truck turn off up ahead. We were in a small settlement – it could hardly be called a village – and the track led back east towards the coast. We passed through sugar cane plantations and a large processing plant before reaching the tourist beaches on Kenya’s east coast. We stopped well back as we saw the truck turn off the road and head towards a large single-storey building behind the sand dunes that lined the coast.

  ‘I suppose it’s good camouflage,’ I said. ‘No one would think of looking at a building that’s surrounded by tourists.’

  ‘That used to be,’ Dickson added. ‘With the Al-Shabaab problem, numbers are less than half what they were.’

  We watched as the pickup left a dusty trail to the building. ‘This must be it,’ I said. ‘They’re unloading. If you wanted to hide something you couldn’t do much better than here. It’s anonymous, close to Mombasa and unremarkable. This has got to be it. Let’s go and have a look.’

  Leaving the car, we walked along the road towards the warehouse. I suppose we must have looked conspicuous but I couldn’t see we had any choice. I hoped that anyone who saw us would think that I was a tourist looking for the beach. There was no sign outside as we passed the building’s entrance and there was nothing attached to the building itself which indicated what the company was. I saw that further back, we’d passed a roadside fruit and snack stall. I pointed it out to Dickson. ‘Go and ask him if he knows who the building belongs to. You could also ask how often they make deliveries.’

  I watched as Dickson went ahead and spoke to the stallholder.

  After a while, he reached into his pocket and passed over some change. In return, he was given a hand of bananas – I hoped he was getting more than bananas for his money. I waited. I’d followed these fake medicines halfway around the world and I must now be getting close to their final destination – final that is except for the poor people who were going to be treated and perhaps poisoned with them.

  I could see that Dickson was making a call, so I assumed he must have a lead of some kind, but the call was brief and he snapped shut his phone and came back to me holding out a banana. I took it while he peeled one for himself. He was obviously going to spin this out for dramatic effect but I refused to rush him and took a bite without saying anything. It tasted surprisingly good.

  ‘He says he doesn’t know,’ Dickson said. I managed to control myself and wait until he was ready to tell me. ‘But he’s here every day so he notices what goes in and out.’ I could tell Dickson was about to get discursive again when he added, ‘Not that he’s got much else to do here since the tourists left.’

  ‘So did he tell you anything useful or do I have to let you give it a big build-up?’

  ‘I’m getting there,’ Dickson said infuriatingly. ‘He said that it was unusual for a factory not to advertise what it was, so that’s made it a source of curiosity among the locals. That’s what made him look more closely at who came and went. It’s funny, isn’t it, that trying to be anonymous can have the opposite effect?’

  ‘Spare me your philosophy, Dickson, just tell me what he said.’

  ‘He said that he’s seen the same truck a few times. It had “Khalid Pharmaceuticals” written on the side, with an address in Mombasa.’

  ‘I don’t suppose he made a note of the address?’ I said without hope.

  ‘He didn’t need to,’ Dickson said and he was now smiling broadly at me with an expression I can only describe as smug. ‘I phoned the office and they checked their files. Khalid Pharmaceuticals is one of the Bakaar companies – it’s a sister company to Tau Pharmaceuticals.’

  ‘That fits.’ It was starting to make some sense at last. ‘The container of pharmaceuticals that we’d tracked leaving the Bakaar facility in India had been hijacked in Zanzibar, rearranged in some way and then sent on here to Kenya in what was obviously an operation that was meant to be secret.’

  ‘Looks like it but we still can’t be sure. Should I organise a raid on the warehouse?’

  ‘All we’d find would be the real thing; they would have got rid of the counterfeits – too risky to store them here.’ I sighed in frustration. ‘We’ve got to trace where the fakes are coming from before they start mass inoculations.’

  Back in Dickson’s office near Mombasa’s Consulate, I booked a call to update Ken Maxwell using their secure line, but first I wanted to go over what we’d found which made little sense to me. ‘If Ansaar is to be believed then
they’ve never heard of Comar Logistics so it’s not them who are supplying the fakes.’

  ‘Assuming they are fakes,’ Dickson said. ‘We haven’t established that for certain.’

  He could be annoyingly difficult at times – especially when he might be right. ‘We know that Comar delivered fakes to pharmacies in Mumbai so it seems reasonable to assume that they’re also involved with overseas consignments. We know that the container they offloaded in Zanzibar contained genuine Oxaban as well as fakes.’

  ‘If we can’t organise a raid then we could try breaking into the warehouse by the beach.’

  ‘Thanks, Dickson. It was only because of you that I managed to survive my last effort. I’m not about to risk it again – next time you might not be there to rescue me.’ Credit where it was due, I thought.

  It was time for my call to London and when I got hold of him, Ken appeared to be impressed with the progress I’d made even though I couldn’t tell him where it was leading. ‘I think it’s time to look into the Bakaar family,’ he said. ‘Try making an appointment to see Jamaal using your International Pharmaceutical identity.’

  I told him that it was an interesting suggestion and that I only wish I’d thought of it myself. It was my weakness that sarcasm was often my first resort.

  The truth was that I was anxious to get back home. I thought I’d taken this matter as far as I reasonably could and I should be able to leave it to Ken Maxwell and the FDA. In addition, I’d had several messages from Sayed so I was becoming increasingly worried about his situation. I’d replied several times saying that I was abroad but would meet Sayed as soon as I got back to the UK but none of them had been acknowledged. In the past, I knew he had only contacted me when he had something to say so I hoped that his silence meant that there should be nothing to worry about.

  In the meantime, Jamaal Bakaar was based here in Mombasa and the trail seemed to lead to him, even if I couldn’t work out why. While I was here, I didn’t have anything to lose by wheeling out my fake identity as a dealer in pharmaceuticals and it would be passing up a straightforward opportunity if I didn’t try to meet him. I thought if Dickson tried to make the appointment it would look as though I had a local support team, but Dickson found it tough going.

  ‘The Bakaar family is like royalty,’ he told me. ‘Although the father’s based in India, they have tentacles spreading through Africa, particularly East Africa. Jamaal might be the youngest of his sons but he holds court like a Mughal emperor of old. He has a team of people around him to protect him. In the publicity I’ve read about him he describes himself as a strategist so he’s unlikely to want to get involved with the sordid business of selling. We’ll have to think of another way in.’

  ‘Ahmed Bashara in Mumbai.’ I clicked my fingers. ‘He’s some kind of cousin. He went out of his way to help me and he might make an introduction. Can we find his number somewhere?’ I checked my phone, but all the arrangements had been made using Ranish’s phone. ‘It shouldn’t be difficult, try Googling it.’ I didn’t know why I was giving instructions about something I could do quite easily myself but I felt on edge at the prospect of facing Jamaal Bakaar with such a flimsy back-up story. At least Bashara might add some degree of assurance.

  After going through a succession of Bakaar employees who appeared to guard Bashara like the Crown jewels, I finally spoke to someone who remembered my visits and put me through to the man himself. If it was this difficult speaking to Bashara, then it would be much worse trying to get through to Jamaal Bakaar.

  After wading through the polite introductions without which Indian businessmen would feel you were being exceptionally rude, I finally got to the point and told him that I was in Mombasa and wanted an introduction to Jamaal Bakaar. At this, he hesitated until I reminded him of the large orders I was considering placing with his company. He finally told me he would do what he could and gave me a name to ring. ‘But wait a couple of hours so that I can speak to him,’ he added before we hung up.

  I turned to Dickson and gave him the name Bashara had given me and told him to try it. ‘Jamaal Bakaar is a busy man. That means he expects anyone who deals with him to have a personal assistant and I’m afraid today you’re it. Make out that I’m also extremely busy, with very limited time in Kenya and many demands on me. With an introduction from his cousin in Mumbai, I can’t see how he can refuse to meet me so it’s worth a try. I’m going back to my hotel so let me know how it goes. Good luck.’

  As I left, I could hear that Dickson had decided not to wait and was on the phone trying to penetrate Bakaar’s protective cordon, constantly switching between English and Swahili.

  19

  I was in my room later that afternoon catching up on emails when Dickson phoned saying that by judicious lying and deceit, not to mention blatant misrepresentation, he’d managed to get an appointment for the following morning. The bad news was that it was with Jamaal’s personal assistant, but I had to agree that this was better than nothing so the next morning found me outside what they called the executive estate on the outskirts of Mombasa.

  I’d gone past the impressive Bakaar Kenyan headquarters downtown and it made me wonder what their main HQ in Mumbai might look like. But it seemed that Jamaal Bakaar preferred to work from his own home. I use the word “home” loosely since anywhere else it would be regarded as a small village. The complex occupied an entire block on the outskirts of the city and from a distance looked like a well-frequented oasis with clumps of tall swaying palms towering over the adjacent properties.

  I signed in at reception and drove through the extravagantly planted avenue with smaller buildings artfully concealed behind the trees – it looked more like a botanical garden than it did an industrialist’s base. Eventually, I came to a sprawling edifice where a woman was standing waiting on the steps. I parked the car and went over to her.

  ‘You are alone?’ Her expression indicated that it might be regarded as her fault if there was a visitor missing. ‘I thought there were going to be two of you.’

  ‘No, it’s just me, I’m afraid. Is Mr Bakaar free to see me?’

  She frowned again which might have been her default expression. ‘No, you are seeing his personal assistant, Mr Halim. It’s this way.’

  I followed her through the entrance. On either side were fragments of Islamic art displayed on the walls with subdued but effective lighting. ‘Does Mr Bakaar collect these?’ I asked my guide. ‘They look very old.’

  She glanced at the walls. ‘He has a large collection – this is only part of it. The more delicate items are kept away from the light. Some of them are from the first millennium. Jamaal Bakaar is a very devout Muslim and believes that our heritage should be protected.’

  The passageway led into a large courtyard where the only sound was of the water running into an oval lily pond – it was so peaceful that I realised why Jamaal preferred to work here. Who wouldn’t? Even the frogs perching on the lilies seemed relaxed.

  Jamaal’s personal assistant was a young man who couldn’t have been much over thirty, but then Jamaal himself was only a few years older. He greeted me with elaborate courtesy and asked if I would mind staying outside in the shade of one of the porticos surrounding the lily pond. As we sat, someone brought a tray of coffee and Halim poured out a cup and offered it to me. ‘Ahmed Bashara tells us that you’re trying to set up a new pharmaceutical distribution operation in West Africa. That’s a very difficult place to do business.’

  ‘But with many opportunities,’ I said, sipping the coffee. ‘This is excellent. Where do you get it from?’

  ‘The group includes a coffee plantation in the Aberdare Highlands. It’s one of our many perks that we get the choice of the crop.’

  ‘Jamaal Bakaar likes to live well.’ I indicated the villa.

  ‘He can afford to and he has very good taste. But back to business. I think we would need to know more about the details of your proposals before we could decide to supply you. We already have an existing
network of customers through our local distributors and we don’t want to upset them by supplying someone who might be setting up in competition with them.’

  ‘I realise that,’ I said. ‘But we want to reach new markets not merely compete with existing ones. There would be no point otherwise and I understand that your distribution operation here in Mombasa can supply everything that your facility in Mumbai can make?’

  ‘Within reason, yes, but the volume has to be there.’

  ‘But you have more than one distributor in Kenya?’ I thought it time to raise the stakes.

  ‘What do you mean, more than one? We only have a small warehouse in Mombasa, a couple of miles from here. It’s only used for overflows or special consignments.’

  ‘But I’ve been told that you have another place over near the coast.’ I was all in now.

  Halim’s poise seemed to be deserting him. ‘I’m telling you,’ he said, tapping the table for emphasis, ‘they only use the one warehouse in Kenya and that’s supplied almost exclusively from our plants in India.’

  Why would he lie? What were they covering up? ‘Do you have much problem with counterfeits?’ I decided to take a chance on it and lead in another suit.

  Halim appeared to be struggling to control himself, as if realising that banging the table in a place like this wasn’t the done thing. ‘I don’t know why you’re asking me these questions. You’ve seen our operation in Mumbai and Mr Bashara showed you the lengths we go to to ensure consistent quality. We don’t deal in fakes.’

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting that there was any problem with your own product.’ I hoped my reassurance was sufficiently smooth. ‘I was asking whether you have a problem with competing counterfeits undercutting your own product.’

  ‘Counterfeits don’t concern us,’ he repeated and stood up. ‘I think we’ve covered everything.’