After the Monsoon

by Robert Karjel

  They were sniffing at something, no doubt realizing that Ayanna had been hired as a courier. But Hansson’s confessions before he drowned in the pool didn’t extend to the little storage shed next to his housekeeper’s garden plot. Grip had the housekeeper’s name and a rough idea of where the shed should be. After asking around, he managed to locate it exactly and even considered breaking in after dark—it was isolated enough. But his plans kept getting derailed by the trinity: Ayanna—tails—shed. He was alone and so couldn’t divide the parts into clear steps. Instead, he’d need to create chaos with a single blow. Everything had to happen in the same instant.

  Grip figured the men were pretty tired by now, precisely because they were only two. They didn’t have much chance to sleep, not when one of them always had to stay awake. Probably, they were heading into their fourth day, not so bad, but at some point people start to get distracted and frustrated, too eager to be done. Once they started to lose focus, they’d try to compensate by pushing things harder.

  Grip had sent Abdu to buy the one last thing he really needed: a couple of strong nylon cable ties from a Lamu hardware store. Once that errand was done, he paid the boy for his services, gave him a good tip, and told him to go to Matondoni, the village where his uncle rented out boats, and stay there a few days. The boy only knew Grip as Mr. Bolzano, the name that he’d registered under at the honeymoon hotel, and the same name the police had seen when they checked his passport as he came ashore. A practical arrangement from long ago, having a passport that not even Didricksen could trace.

  “One more thing,” said Grip. “Give this to him when you get there.” Another envelope with instructions for the uncle and all that remained of his war chest, except for two hundred dollars. He watched the boy’s back disappear down the wide path that followed the coast north and beyond. Just as long as he doesn’t fall into the hands of the police, he thought.

  In his hotel room, he lay on his back watching the ceiling fan spin. He needed to kill time. Waiting until the sun sank and disappeared.

  At nine, the night shift came on in Grip’s hotel. Fifteen minutes before, he’d spoken to a young man who worked at the front desk, as he stood to one side picking dead leaves off a floral arrangement in the lobby.

  “Well, I was wondering if you . . .” Grip began, as the man snapped something off, “you have rooms down by the water.”

  “Yes, they are nice, a bit larger than the others,” the man said, turning to him. “Would you like to change?”

  “No, no, but I thought there might be a possibility, could . . . could we . . . I’d like one of them, just overnight, you understand, and I’ll also keep the room I have.”

  “Now?”

  “You give me a key now, and I’ll hand you two hundred dollars, what do you say? All you have to do is make sure someone cleans the room tomorrow morning.”

  With a mutually conspiratorial look, the man said to Grip: “And you will be out before breakfast?”

  “As if it never happened.”

  “Wait here?”

  Key in hand, and no record of it anywhere. Grip stashed a small bag under the bed in the extra room. Ten minutes later, the night staff at the front desk came in and straightened their collars. They smiled without a second thought, as Grip passed by and went outside.

  For the first time in weeks, he felt the night air cool him off. He stopped for a moment and looked up. The stars were disappearing. There was a low rumble of thunder in the distance, and a breeze rustled like a premonition in the palm trees.

  Grip had just checked the email account he shared with Stark. A new draft message was waiting. It said that Philippa Ekman had seen rubber bags filled with kerosene being loaded onto a transport plane, clearly preparing for parachute drops. It would be a long haul, with few places to refuel. An hour later, the helicopters she’d seen arriving took off from the airport. There was no information about what they were carrying, but the time was carefully noted: they left at 17:24.

  Right, thought Grip, now it was Friday night. In Lamu, the bar crowd would soon be in a good mood, and in Djibouti, a group of helicopters had just taken off on a nice long flight, right before sunset.

  Grip started walking again, taking a path toward Lamu’s center. When he heard the sounds of street life getting closer, he texted Ayanna: “Fifteen minutes to go.” He was traveling light: no wallet, no ID, just a phone with a prepaid card, a couple of cable ties in his pocket, and a jackknife. If something went wrong, he’d be one previously unknown, probably dead, Mr. Vincenzo Bolzano from Bari.

  52

  She’d heard it before, and even seen one once, when she was taking Sebastian out to the toilet—a helicopter. But it had always been during the day, far away, and it always seemed to be following the coast. Now it was in the middle of the night, and coming from the land. Something like a shift in the wind, just for a couple of seconds, and Jenny wasn’t even sure it was a helicopter that she heard. Still, she sat up. The guards were still partying, but not as loudly as earlier in the evening. Even before the sun had gone down, a guard who was always unpredictable when drunk had come inside, and, while keeping one finger on the trigger, licked his other forefinger and stroked it along Alexandra’s cheek. More predictably, Darwiish had stormed in later, completely drunk, knocked over a chair, and kicked Carl-Adam in the neck.

  After the muffled sound pulsing in the wind, Jenny tried to hear what was going on with the guards and their buddies who’d arrived in jeeps. She tried to figure where the more laid-back ones were sitting and chatting, as the front door banged open and shut in the other house, and where the high-strung ones had built a fire and gone on with their binge. It was from there that she heard the voices of the men as they played with their weapons. The clanking of guns being sloppily cocked and magazines getting shoved in and out. Nothing careful or controlled, just the usual Friday-night male rituals. Jenny didn’t so much as blink, but Carl-Adam flinched and gasped with every random shot. Then he tossed and turned a few times before seeming to fall asleep. Alexandra lay completely still, but Jenny had no idea if she was actually sleeping. There was shouting, and some kind of struggle. Then a crash, as someone had been hit or toppled over.

  Jenny got up and looked through the peephole. She felt the night air against her face. The flickering fire beyond her view didn’t give off much light, but there was just enough for her to make out the foot of Sebastian’s grave. The head of it, and everything beyond, was swallowed up by darkness. She tried to imagine the hills in the distance and where the sound could be coming from.

  Bam! Bang! A moment of confusion. The bullets must have flown right past her; she’d heard the sharp hiss before the cracks that followed. Two in quick succession. Behind her, Carl-Adam’s violent breathing, and outside, although she still couldn’t see anyone there, sudden chaos. Someone had been hit. When a voice shouted a warning, Jenny realized that the shots had come from outside, not from the guards’ weapons. Then a blinding white light shone through the peephole. A supernova. Jenny turned back into the room, where the colors made a rainbow in front of her, and took a tentative step. Although she wasn’t sure what all the shooting was about, she had one clear goal: “The gun!” she shouted to Carl-Adam. She couldn’t see him, only the swirling colors, but she kneeled and grabbed his good arm while he half-sat, dazed. “Now! Get it!”

  “What?”

  The rush, the thought—Carl-Adam didn’t get it. He yanked his arm from her tight grasp, as if he’d been unfairly punished. Jenny pushed him away and, guided by her fingers spread out and feeling along the wall, she took some low, fast steps to the opposite corner. Down by the floor, where the stone was wedged. She still couldn’t see anything straight ahead, only the colors in their undulating forms, but in the periphery, the darkness had regained some of its shape. She made out Alexandra’s mattress and saw her move.

  Jenny dropped to her knees, feeling her way as if she were blind. She was surprised when her foot found the stone on the floor, and
then she reached her fingers into the open hole. Her hand felt around, scraping her wrist on the sharp edges of the hole. Around and around, in the emptiness that couldn’t be.

  “Alexandra!”

  A stray beam of light lit up the slit between the floor and the door for an instant, before the door to their room flew open. A flashlight, a rifle, and one of the guards. Blood glistened over his shoulder and side, splashing around him when he made a sudden movement. The flashlight broke through Jenny’s blindness; she was the one he was looking for. He pulled her to him, trying to get her in front of him, as a shield against whatever was outside. He wrestled with her and his weapon, and then Darwiish came through the door, taking fast backward steps. The shooting outside was getting closer. Darwiish mumbled loudly, his attention completely focused on the outer room, while the guard behind him struggled to get a firm grip on Jenny, who put up a fight.

  Too much was going on, and there were too many impressions in the darkness and noise outside for anyone to realize that a shot had been fired in the back room. No one flinched; not even the guard himself—who’d come up behind Jenny and gotten an arm around her—realized that he’d been shot. Crosswise, up through his stomach and out his chest. The power of his grasp flowed out of him, and in shock, he clung to Jenny for a moment before he fell like a puppet whose strings had been cut. His flashlight lay on the floor, shining a diagonal beam across the room.

  The second shot had a much more immediate effect. Darwiish hadn’t noticed what happened behind him, but stood crouching in the doorway and yelling threats into the room in front of him, when Alexandra stepped forward into Jenny’s peripheral vision. She held her thin arms in front of her, her movements totally direct and focused. She was short, but Darwiish was crouching. Pressing the barrel against his neck, the girl had made sure the gun was cocked. The pirate leader had misjudged where the real danger lay. Darwiish fell face-first from the impact, as if starting a somersault, part of his head splashing over the floor in front of him.

  Much later, Jenny found it difficult to understand what had actually happened after Darwiish went down. Her impressions contradicted each other, and her senses were confused because she couldn’t see. There were explosions, she was pretty sure, and soldiers pouring in from all sides. She didn’t know exactly how they could do this when the walls were still standing, weren’t they? There were flashlights, shouts, and gloved hands that held her down. “Alexandra!” she screamed again and again.

  She remembered how she’d sat down and held her daughter. And then suddenly they were out. Under the night sky. No more shots. Clumsy soldiers, incomprehensible equipment. The only human part that showed was a bit of face. One had leaned down and asked: “Where is your son?” Jenny didn’t understand. “Your son, Sebastian Bergenskjöld, where is he?” She had explained, pointing to the nearby stone pile. They’d spoken Swedish with her. They had, hadn’t they?

  Then came the lights in the sky. She’d been right, it was the sound of helicopters that she’d heard, and now several arrived, making a turn and landing in a row as they kicked up a cloud of desert dust. So much dust that two soldiers had to sit down and cover her and Alexandra. It was only once she was sitting inside the helicopter that she saw Carl-Adam, leaning against the wall in a seat. Unharmed, but a medic had given him some type of drip. The man she’d met in London and everything they’d once had—now he was completely foreign to her. They didn’t look at each other once during the entire flight. The helicopter ride seemed like a long dream. Had they given her something, or maybe put a drip in her too? She knew for sure that Alexandra lay with her head in her lap the whole way, and that the rotors were spinning—that was what she recalled of the trip. They must have put something over her ears, but she didn’t remember. But she did remember the little flags that each of the soldiers wore in the cabin. It was crowded, there were people everywhere, sand-colored coats, backpacks, and more. And those little blue-and-yellow flags, those she remembered for sure.

  53

  Ayanna had her phone on mute. “Go now,” said the message on her screen. She opened the door to her room at Baytil Ajaib and, breathing fast, headed for the courtyard through the balconies, feeling she was going in slow motion. She walked with forced calm, carrying a cloth bag over her shoulder, wearing a scarf around her neck and her hair down. Down the stairs, across more balconies, past the front desk, and out. She’d been given a detailed description, in the previous text, of the route she needed to take, out to where the town gave way to fertile fields. People were out for their evening stroll, but she’d walk up to the hills above the harbor, where it was less crowded and she’d be easy to follow.

  Grip watched the man in the striped shirt start following her near the hotel and then, after a couple of blocks, call his accomplice. Five minutes later, they made eye contact, and the newcomer gave a signal when he saw Ayanna, and the handoff was done. Striped-shirt was free, at least for a while. Probably he wanted to get something to eat, or just get a coffee, needing the caffeine. A short break without having to be on guard, and without having to worry about that woman.

  The man who’d been sitting on a battered oilcan on the street outside Baytil Ajaib waiting for Ayanna started slowly making his way down to the harbor. Rubbing his eyes, as if the lack of sleep caught up with him the moment he no longer had a job to do.

  He was alone in the street, alone at one of three different places someone had predicted he might go. From a distance, no one would have thought twice about him stumbling, even if you’d caught it out of the corner of your eye. After all, it was dark out there, with only a few lights on. It probably looked like he was surprised by something, but in fact a hand had pulled him in, grabbing his shirt from behind. And just a tenth of a second after the hand pulled, the man had a cable tie around his neck. It looked as if he was trying to steady himself, when, with a whirring sound, the grooves of the cable tie locked irreversibly into place. Instantly, his air supply was cut off. The only sound was a barely audible hiss. With one knee down and one foot in the street, the man did everything he could to get his fingers between his neck and the cable. According to the tie’s specifications, it would hold at least three hundred kilos. With a sharp jerk, he was yanked back up to standing, and then he was dragged along. They went around a corner and into a narrow courtyard filled with trash. The man, still struggling with the cord around his neck, was getting dizzy. He didn’t even notice the foot that made his knees give way, as he slid down onto his side. His arms had lost their strength, so there was no resistance when Grip took his hands and attached them to an iron railing using more cable ties. His feet had just started twitching in spasms, when the knife went in and, with one flick, his airway was free again. He gasped from the shock but moved like a tranquilized animal, and could only roll from side to side while his pockets were quickly emptied of their contents. He was conscious, but no more than that. It would take quite a while before he’d be able to cry for help.

  Ayanna had stuck to her route and now headed on to streets with shorter walls and lower buildings. The man tailing her made another call from his cell phone but got no answer. Soon they weren’t in the city anymore, but surrounded by dry sagebrush and garden plots. He wanted his partner with him, to follow her out into the darkness, and he swore quietly when he realized he’d have to go alone.

  The housekeeper lived on the edge of the forest, with trees on one side and cleared land stretching more than thirty meters in the other. There were rows of mounded soil and seedlings supported by strands of vertical steel wire. Among some banana trees, at the other end, stood a shed. A powerful front lamp shone from the house toward the lot, presumably to discourage nighttime vegetable thieves. The light from there filtered through the banana leaves, casting shadows that danced in the breeze across the walls of the shed.

  Ayanna had kept up a good pace on the lonely road beyond the city buildings, but now she turned cautious. Maybe it was the lamplight, or her sense that she was being followed despite
the isolation of the place, that made her hesitate. She walked past the house, followed the path out into the darkness, turned around, and circled back. Then she stopped, seeing the shed a little farther off, among the banana trees. The light that fell across her face revealed her for a moment, with her eyes closed. A hope, a prayer, before she left the path.

  She had no trouble getting the door open, as there was only one key on the ring that fit. She breathed unevenly as she entered, not really knowing what she was supposed to do. With the door left wide open, shadowy light entered from outside. There were pots, shovels, some sacks of fertilizer stacked in a pile, and, next to them, three elegant fabric suitcases. Packed and ready, as she’d expected. But maybe this was more baggage than she’d thought—she’d never be able to carry three suitcases. Or maybe that was never the idea.

  She noticed the man when his body blocked the light at the door. She didn’t step backward but instead clenched her fists over her chest, facing the inevitable.

  He moved fast, using excessive force against a woman who showed no sign of resisting. As if he wanted to quickly get something over with. He held something in his hand, but in the darkness, it was impossible to know what.

  Right there in the doorway, stepping in, he reacted instinctively when Ayanna took her eyes off him, and he raised his left arm in defense.

  It was his arm movement that made the cable tie miss, even though Grip had jumped him from behind. In the shadows, Grip couldn’t see, but he felt sure that the thing the man was holding was a gun. They both tumbled down in the storeroom, and then their bodies rolled apart. There was the sound of a shovel falling, and shoes scraping against the floor. Not a shot, not now, for a thousand reasons. The hand with whatever it was holding made a sweeping motion, and in a shaft of light, the barrel was revealed.