“You’re dead!” A sinewy arm locked around Mohamed’s neck.
Ahmed was off on his toes, but turning to see Mohamed held captive, he slowed to a halt.
“If you run, I will kill him,” the man said, and both boys knew he meant it. The cruel scar running from eye to chin spoke for him.
Instinctively, Ahmed sized the man up. Dressed traditionally in a dark-brown ankle-length djellaba and maroon skullcap, he was by no means an imposing figure, but there was something in the way he held himself – perhaps the cold, confident eyes – that said he was not a person to mess with.
“If you pull that, I’ll snap his neck,” the stranger warned, reading Ahmed’s mind.
Reluctantly, Ahmed reached around, removed the knife from his waistband and threw it onto the pickup, a curt look signaling Mohamed to do likewise.
“Shemkara?” the man asked, releasing his hold on the boy.
“Sayyid.” Ahmed nodded, staring at the dusty, grit-strewn ground.
“Then I have a better offer for you.” He flicked his head toward the door of the truck.
The boys obliged, climbing in the passenger side.
The man drove out of the city for an hour and up a steep and winding mountain pass, Ahmed and Mohamed spellbound by the open countryside yet terrified of the dirt road’s sheer drop, which had doubtless claimed the occupants of many a carelessly driven vehicle. On the approach to the village of Azila, the man stopped the truck on a particularly vicious bend. He killed the engine and lit a cigarette.
Ahmed looked to his right to see the scrubland falling away hundreds of feet below. A small stone plaque sat concreted to a rock in the hillside.
My beloved Safiya, Amir and Hassan. Though you fly with the angels, your memory forever sings in my heart. Saleem.
“I will make it simple for you,” the man began, looking dead ahead. “I am Naseem, son of Saeed.” He paused to let his words register, the boys instantly recognizing the birth name of the one known throughout the land as Al Mohzerer, “the Grower.”
“The product is the best, and you will work hard to keep it the best. There will be no drugs, no pilfering and no shirking. In return you will not have to live as excrement in the city’s asshole. You will have a roof over your heads, food in your bellies, and no one will touch you.”
Ahmed and Mohamed shifted uncomfortably on the truck’s bench seat.
“But do not cross me . . . if you value the air in your lungs and wish to see tomorrow’s sunrise.”
- 19 -
In the morning, as Hans and Penny readied Future for departure, Marcel emerged from Sietske’s cabin clutching a scuba mask and a pint of black coffee laced with cognac. With his still-in-bed hair and dumpling eyes, he looked on the delicate side of fragile.
“So you guys leaving now?” he asked, his voice as rough as sandpaper.
“Yeah, see you in La Coruña!” Penny blew a kiss and threw off the mooring line.
“Ja! I see you guys there.”
“See you there, Marshell!” Jessica waved Bear in the air.
“I’m following you, princess!”
They chugged out of the marina in conditions the bulletins had promised, but as Penny cut the engine and Hans made good the mainsail, something of a commotion broke out on the dock.
“Attendez! Attendez, s’il vous plaît!”
Running along the pontoon toward Sietske were two of the marina’s officials, looking as though they wanted a word with her skipper. But as Marcel swung the yacht around in a frantic reverse arc, the scuba mask resting on his head and water dripping from his shaggy mane, he didn’t appear keen to oblige, leaving his pursuers lurching over the dockside waving their fists like extras in a Bond movie.
“What was all that about?” asked Penny. “And what was with the diving mask?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say it might be the little matter of mooring fees.” Hans chuckled. “The mask, I have no idea.”
At one point it looked as if Sietske would catch up with Future, but eventually her serene pace proved no match for the modern yacht’s racing line. With clear sky and fair northerlies as predicted, the first part of the crossing went smoothly. Hans and Penny made a great team. When it came to seamanship, both instinctively knew each other’s strengths, Hans trusting Penny’s superior knowledge and she his scrupulousness and pragmatism. Penny’s bond with Jessica made the whole deal tighter.
“Crew briefing of the century!” Hans announced.
“Crew briefing of the century!” Penny echoed.
“Crew briefing of the century, Bear!” Jessica grabbed her furry companion and joined them on deck.
Hans addressed the issue of abandoning ship, explaining how the life raft worked and why it was important to don survival suits in an emergency. He showed Jessica how to set the handheld VHF radio to the correct frequency and broadcast a Mayday, and how to deploy the EPIRB should they have to leave the yacht.
“What’s the emergency channel, First Mate?”
“Sixteen, Pap— er, skippa.”
“Well done.”
For a bit of fun they each had a go at operating the hand-cranked desalinator. Working on the principle of reverse osmosis, the pump turned salt water into fresh, but as Jessica found out, it took significant effort to produce even the slightest trickle.
The next day’s weather bulletin dampened their spirits with a report of the Azores High moving off toward the Eastern Seaboard, leaving choppy conditions and variable wind in its place. Over a late lunch they discussed their options, Penny serving up chunky slices of whole-wheat baguette laden with French pâté and potent-smelling cheese.
“Papa!” Jessica shrieked as she gazed over the coaming.
“Dolphins, sweat pea.”
“Porpoises,” Penny corrected him.
Six gray friends zipped through the water at Future’s bow, flashing white bellies as they turned on their side every so often to fix a beady eye on the spectators.
“That one’s looking at you, Jess!” Hans put an arm around his daughter.
“Heeee!”
So enchanting were their companions, Future’s crew watched mesmerized for over an hour, until a rumble of distant thunder sent the porpoises shooting off. Penny looked up to see a bank of dark cloud moving in from the west.
“Too late to turn back,” she whispered.
Hans nodded as a gentle swell erased the cat’s paw-print effect on the sea’s previously polished surface.
By late afternoon a force six headwind slowed Future’s progress. The barometer plummeting, Penny furled a third reef in the mainsail.
“It’s going to be a long night.” She smiled. “Will Jessie need a seasickness tablet?”
“Please, Penny. If you can keep her occupied below, I don’t mind taking the first couple of watches, and we better close the companionway.”
“Aye aye, captain,” Penny replied, deploying the “last-chance” line abaft before disappearing inside.
True to its name, the hundred-yard-long rope knotted at three-foot intervals offered a last chance to stay with the boat should one of them fall overboard while alone on deck. Grabbing it would trip the self-steering mechanism, slewing the yacht into the wind and bringing her to a standstill.
While The Lion King played on DVD, Penny fetched an ornate wooden box from her kitbag, opening it up to reveal a veritable Aladdin’s cave of colored beads, gemstones, leather thongs and silver chain. Great fun, her jewelry making generated a significant second income as she traveled the marinas of the world, hawking her avant-garde trinkets to rich and often bored yachting wives. She stripped wire from a spool and, using a pair of needle-nosed pliers, twisted the end around the eye of a small metal clasp. Having measured the bracelet for size around Jessica’s wrist, she snipped the wire to length and let the little girl choose which beads she wanted on it.
Delighted with her gift, Jessica snuggled up against Penny to watch the movie.
“JJ loved Lion King.”
> “Did he?”
“Hmm. Mommy called him Simba.”
“Really?”
“Hmm . . . but they got dead.”
“Oh, honey. Daddy told me.” Penny welled up, putting her arms around the little girl, wishing she could do more.
“A bad man hurt them. But Papa says it’s okay because they will always be with us when we look at the flowers and the trees and the sea.”
Jessica looked up at Penny, tears pouring down her cheeks as she sought affirmation.
“Oh, sweetheart.” Penny pulled Jessica close as her tiny shoulders shrugged up and down. “Papa’s right. They’ll always be here. You know those porpoises that visited us today?”
“Uh-huh, uh-uh.”
“They came to tell us that Mommy and JJ are happy and smiling, and everything is going to be all right.”
“I just want Mommy and JJ to be here, Penny . . . uh-uh.”
“I know, sweetie. I wish that too.”
- 20 -
“The kif in the Rif is the Rif in the kif!” shrieked Ahmed, whacking the garbage bag of dried marijuana with two sticks like a drummer in a rock band.
“The Rif and the kif are one and the same!” Mohamed replied, completing their youthful mantra.
High up in Morocco’s Rif Mountains, the view stretched to the shimmering waters of the Mediterranean Sea, yet in the murk of the hut the boys concentrated on beating the kif plants, stripping them of their valuable buds for processing into the finest hashish.
“This is boring. I wish we were picking.” Mohamed sighed, his thoughts flicking to harvesting the pungent-smelling blooms out on the miles of man-made terraces.
The Berbers had inhabited this region of North Africa since prehistoric times and, over the last century, cleared vast tracts of pine forest, wild flowers and rocky outcrops for cultivation.
“You blinkered baboon!” Ahmed pretend-whipped his friend. “Remember the plan!”
“Am-ster-daaaam!” Mohamed’s face lit up
“Girls, girls, girls!” Ahmed grinned, exposing a row of blackened teeth that “girls” would surely die for.
A year had passed since Al Mohzerer first brought them to the hut, situated on a mountain farm his family had owned for generations. Compared to sleeping in a sewer wondering where their next meal came from, it was a great improvement and far better than the depravity of the orphanage and the unhealthy grind in the carpet factory.
They awoke every day at dawn upon hearing the adhan piped from the village mosque’s ancient minaret. However, the boys never paid homage to Allah. Even if they had wanted to pray five times a day – which they did not – Al Mohzerer forbade such a practice, for time was money, the competition fierce in this industry. After a breakfast of bread and sweet black coffee, the boys went to work, relentlessly thrashing the cannabis stems or harvesting the plants out on the slopes.
Every so often a Dutch buyer or a group of backpackers arrived at the farm to witness production, a highpoint for Ahmed and Mohamed, the visitors showering them with gifts and dirhams and teaching them phrases in English. Some of the girls wore shorts and skimpy tops, a source of amusement and intrigue for the cheeky pair, who worked their puckish charm for all it was worth to receive hugs and pecks on the cheek.
“Mon-ni-ca!” Mohamed often teased, reminding Ahmed of the French girl he’d taken a shine to last year. “Kissy, kissy, kissy!”
He would clasp his hands to his chest and jiggle them up and down.
“Idiot!” Ahmed always flushed.
Naturally, many of the guests jumped at the chance to purchase hashish. The boys would slip them quarter ounces of the “squidgy black” they made by spitting on palmfuls of hash powder and kneading the mix into malleable lumps with their fingers, giving strict instructions not to disclose the transaction to the other workers, especially Al Mohzerer, who’d chopped people’s hands off for less.
Every dirham earned went into a can hidden beneath the hut’s floorboards, ready for the day they would leave this place and head for the bright lights of Amsterdam, where people bought cannabis on the street, smoked it in cafés, and girls sat half-naked in the glow of red bulbs wantonly awaiting young bucks such as them. When the time came, the two of them would steal as many blocks of Al Mohzerer’s hashish as they could carry and a boat from the harbor in Tangier, then sail across the Strait of Gibraltar to Spain and hitchhike to the land of milk and honey.
One Sunday a month Al Mohzerer allowed the boys to travel to the city with him. While he attended to the business of delivering Golden Monkey, they would watch a movie, sneaking below the ticket booth window to save their hard-earned cash for the Big Out. As for entertainments snacks, Ahmed distracted the storekeepers while Mohamed shoved them into his pockets. The rest of the sojourn they spent at the ferry port or backpacker hostels, touting their squidgy black lumps to dope-loving tourists.
“Jiggy, jiggy, jiggy!” Mohamed pouted his lips, jiving with his hands as if flying a kite. “Am-ster-daaaam!”
“Vroom, vroom!” Ahmed beamed, steering an imaginary sports car around an imaginary bend. “BMW!”
“Ferrari!”
“Rolls . . . Royce!”
Whipping the dried plants, the boys fell silent under the allure of their long-planned adventure, minutes passing as the highly prized follicles of marihuana accumulated in the bottom of the garbage sack.
“Footyball!” Mohamed piped up, his thoughts flicking to the homemade soccer ball they had made by wrapping hundreds of carrier bags around each other. Amongst the endless rows of weed, it was easy to have a discreet kickabout.
“Beckham!”
“Ronaldo!”
Their boyish banter continued – anything to relieve the monotony of a twelve-hour shift in the hut.
Without warning the door flew open, kicking up a cloud of yellow dust as sunlight poured into the room. The teenagers fell silent, neither daring to look up.
In walked Al Mohzerer.
As a glittering golden haze swirled about them, Ahmed and Mohamed went at the task with renewed vigor. Al Mohzerer stared at them for a few seconds, then picked up a plastic barrel brimming with potent plant matter, loaded it onto his battered truck and drove off.
“Ketama!” Ahmed chirped with a grin, mimicking the visiting Dutch dealers.
“Sputnik!” Mohamed replied – another brand name the region’s hashish went by in the coffee shops of Amsterdam.
“Zero Zero!”
“King Hassan!”
“Rifman!”
And so it went on.
- 21 -
Conditions worsened, the wind growing stronger and increasingly unpredictable, the mainsail flogging around like a bucking stallion. Hans focussed on keeping Future’s nose pointed into the oncoming swell, a formidable task as waves smashed into the yacht from all angles. The rain turned from lazy slugs into a barrage of biting pellets, torrents of spray drenching him further, and as the once-distant cloud bank blocked out the remaining daylight, a bolt of lightning zigzagged down to stab the sea in the distance. It arced brighter twice, as if Mother Nature had fired a Taser and then double-zapped her victim, leaving an image of a snaking white bungee burned into Hans’ retinas. Thunder rumbled seconds after, a sign the worst was yet to come.
Future rode up endless rollers that built still higher, but just as the yacht looked to founder, she crashed down their steep faces into the black troughs below, a deluge of white water cascading over the bow and threatening to pitch her end over end. Like a whale coming up for air, she shrugged off the liquid avalanche and charged into the next berg with her indomitable spirit.
Used to such conditions, Penny prepared for the worst, stowing all the gear in the cabin and strapping Jessica and Bear down in their bunk, no easy task as Future careened into the maelstrom.
“Don’t worry, darling. Neptune’s just playing with us.”
“Who’s Neptune, Penny?”
“Well, once upon a time . . .”
The c
onstantly changing wind threatened to knock Future down, so high-pitched it reminded Hans of Indy 500 cars changing gear. He checked the wind indicator to see it pegging seventy knots, confirming that these were by far the worst conditions in which he had skippered. Furling in the remaining canvas, he unclipped his safety line ready to go forward and set the storm jib, but an almighty gust slammed the mainsail down into the seething ocean, plunging the starboard beam deep underwater.
As Jessica screamed, Penny flew across the cabin, smashing her head against the opposite bunk, her body collapsing onto the sole as the yacht rolled upright.
“Papa!”
Hans had problems of his own. Tons of seawater poured out of the cockpit, sucking him overboard into the path of a breaking giant. He drew a sharp breath and attempted a duck-dive, but it was too late. The wave crashed down, knocking air from his lungs and tumbling him around until there was nothing but cold, black silence.
Desperate to breathe, Hans kicked for the surface, but foul-weather gear and sea boots retarded his progress, the deep layer of froth offering little resistance for his determined strokes.
Stay calm! His military training came into play, but, breaking through the surf, he saw Future had sailed on. She was thirty yards away and moving further every second.
“Penny!” Hans screamed to no avail, realizing his only chance of survival was the man-overboard line. He ducked under, pulled off his footwear and, leaving his life jacket deflated so as not to impede his movement, struck out in a direction perpendicular to the Future’s wake.
By now she was sixty yards distant. Hans put this out of his mind and plowed on through the breakers, desperate to feel an arm chop down on the rope but knowing the massive swell would considerably shorten its hundred-yard length.
Crossing Future’s wake by a good ten yards, Hans still couldn’t find the line and, treading water, wondered if he had swum over the top of it. He was about to resign himself to fate when a fluorescent float came skimming across the foam toward him.
“Arrrhh!”
He lunged, grabbing the last foot of nylon as the yacht began dragging him through the wave crests like an oversized fishing lure.