Djibouti

  What she kept wondering, How did Idris get started? Who gave him machine guns so he could hijack ships and make enough to buy whatever he wants? Who was backing this fun-loving pirate?

  He said, “Yesterday we had trouble boarding the ship, so we let that one go. What difference does it make, there are so many ships come through our sea. Today,” Idris said, “is an easy one. These boys are not mine, they from another clan, with experience. They won’t need anyone telling them what to do.”

  “Good,” Dara said. “I’d love to see you in action, but I’ll settle for an interview.”

  He said, “Yes, a chance to be with you. Perhaps make plans for sometime we not doing nothing so important as being together.”

  He had turned and was speaking Somali to his Coast Guard boys, all armed with AKs, gesturing now for them to get going. He said to Dara, “There is a sailing yacht out there you can’t see. It’s maybe two miles from here.”

  Xavier shooting all this with the Canon, recording Idris’s voice.

  “Two persons aboard. Maybe we know them.”

  Dara said, “Billy?”

  “It could be, yes, I’m hoping so.”

  “You’d hijack Billy’s yacht?”

  “Worth two million dollars he told me,” Idris said. “How much you think he’d pay to keep it?” Idris grinning now. “I’m kidding with you. We frighten Billy, that’s all, as a joke. Show we have a sense of humor. People don’t think we have things to laugh at, but we do. Funny things happen to us.”

  “Climb aboard,” Dara said, “we’ll go rescue the poor guy.”

  She turned to Xavier as Idris stepped aboard.

  “You get all that?”

  “The whole thing,” Xavier said.

  CHAPTER NINE

  BILLY WYNN WAS WEARING a canvas shooting vest with cartridge loops on both sides of his chest, eight loops, four empty. He threw his lines to Xavier and Xavier pulled the Pegaso alongside to tie on to Buster, the boat sitting a hundred or so yards from Eyl’s beach of white sand and shelves of rocks.

  He said to Idris, “Hey, it’s good seeing you again, buddy.” He told Dara and Xavier he must’ve looked like money-money-money sitting out there like a brain-dead Republican, no idea there were pirates about. He said to Dara, “I know you never vote their ticket, you’re too with-it. You know things.” He said, “I saw the boats coming out toward us, I thought sounding mean—I told Helene, ‘Hon, go on below while I take care of business.’” He didn’t mention what Helene asked him, if this was part of the test. Wild Arabs bearing down on them. Was she being funny? He questioned times he wasn’t sure. His feeling for Helene was love, the tender kind, till she drew him to the king-size bed he called their love bunk.

  “The first thing I did was check my elephant gun I keep up here in the cockpit when we’re under way. Every morning I bring it topside and fire both loads. Get use to the kick.”

  Dara saw Idris about to step from Buster to the Pegaso and said, “Wait.” And handed Idris a mike to aim at his buddy. “You’ll be doing me a huge favor.”

  “But I can’t show my face,” Idris said, “I’m a bandit to people who can persecute me.”

  “We’re only shooting Billy while I talk to him, for the film. You won’t be seen.”

  Xavier shot Idris stepping to the sailboat, Billy offering a hand, Xavier hearing, “Man, but it’s a treat to see you again,” while they shook hands. And Idris’s voice: “You had trouble with my men? They went by us towing one of the boats and drinking champagne. I said, ‘What is going on?’”

  Xavier nudged Dara. “You gonna love it.”

  Dara called to Billy, “What did the pirates want?”

  “Hold me for ransom, what those people do.”

  “Where’s Helene?”

  “I told her stay below while I run ’em off.” He looked around. “She’s still there.”

  “Two weeks ago,” Dara said, “we saw you leaving Djibouti. You flew past us and turned around to go back.”

  “I took off,” Billy said, “not realizing I was short of stores.”

  “Champagne?” Dara said.

  “Among other goods. These guys now,” Billy was saying, “they’re making a wide circle to come around and run past me from about fifty meters.” He said to Dara, “Why, you think I drink too much?”

  Dara said, “How would I know?”

  “Helene says getting ripped seems to calm me down. I become serious for some reason. Helene says I make pronouncements.”

  Idris had to wait before saying, “You wave something at my boys, show you’re a friend?”

  “Like what, a white flag? I’m out of the cockpit holding a double-barrel rifle fires six-hundred-caliber Nitro Express rounds. They’re coming past me now, ducks in a row. I fire and blow the Yamaha off the first one. The second boat I fire a speck wide, hit the outboard but took a chunk out of the stern. The boat sank in five minutes opened up like it was. I see the guys swimming to the first boat drifting away. Dumb guys don’t bring any oars. They look like they’re in a panic, the ones in the water, till they got pulled aboard the third boat. I reloaded, my shoulder sore as hell. You talk about a kick—I’ve seen that Holland & Holland knock people right off their feet. There’s a trick to not getting injured by the recoil.”

  Dara said, “What about the third boat?”

  “They sat out there two hundred meters looking at me. I wanted, I could’ve hit two of ’em before they pulled away.”

  Dara said, “Why didn’t you?”

  “For what? ’Cause they want to get rich? I thought of telling Helene to put her bra on and come topside. Show these Mohammedans what they’re missing. You know my elephant gun set me back a hundred and thirty-five thousand? I’ll tell you for a fact, it’s good to have the means.”

  Dara said, “The third boat left?”

  “No, I finally motioned ’em over. Put the rifle down and held up a bottle of champagne in each hand.” He said to Idris, “Those were your guys want to hijack me?”

  “They want to greet you,” Idris said, “as a friend of mine come to visit. But you shoot at them?”

  “At the boats, not knowing their intention,” Billy said. “I was to shoot at them, they’d be floaters.”

  Dara watched Idris on the screen shrug and then smile. He said, “I apologize for the misunderstanding.” She watched him turn now to gaze toward the coast. “And would like you to be my guests”—the camera moving toward a scattering of low buildings along the beach, one much larger on the slope above, dominating the scene—“at my home in Eyl.”

  DARA CLOSED THE LID of the laptop.

  Xavier said, “You went on the sailboat so you could speak to Helene.”

  “I got Billy to invite me. He said, ‘You want to learn how to sail?’ I told him I had to use the head and went below. Helene was sitting at the table in the salon with a bottle of champagne. She said, ‘Get a glass. That fucking gunfire—my ears are still ringing. He wants me to fire it, get knocked on my ass.’”

  “Champagne helps now?”

  “It can’t hurt. I find if I stay ripped it’s easier to follow instructions. ‘Aye, aye, Captain.’ He’s teaching me how to sail, in the fucking ocean. I don’t know how many times I thought of sticking a finger down my throat.”

  “But you hung in.”

  “Still his little sailor. I have to actually mop the fucking deck.”

  “Part of the trial, eh?”

  “I guess. I’m not sure it’s worth it.”

  “Outside of that, you still like him?”

  “He’s weird. Always looking for pirates, his elephant gun handy.”

  “But he doesn’t try to shoot them.”

  “He sunk their boat. If they happen to drown, tough shit.”

  “What’s he talk about?”

  “The rules of the sea. How to tack, come about. How much money he has. Arabs. He doesn’t care for Arabs, I found that out. He said, ‘The Mohammedans scored with 9/11’”—Helene trying
to sound like Billy from East Texas—“‘now they’ll try for a bigger bang.’”

  “Does he mean al Qaeda? Bin Laden and his people?”

  “Billy doesn’t say. I think he’s dreaming, trying to think of a role he can play. And I happen to be with him, I’m his gang.”

  “He isn’t CIA, is he? You mentioned that once.”

  “He hinted at it, sounding like he’s some kind of government agent, but he’s not. I came right out and asked him and he smiled, very condescending, and patted my cheek. Like what do you expect from a chick works fashion shows. He said why should he get tied up in rules and red tape when he’s got the way to get answers on his own. He means he’s got enough money to bribe anyone who can help him. He believes terrorists are playing a part in this, letting the pirates have thirty million, less than half of what’s been paid so far.”

  “That much in ransoms?”

  “At least. More than sixty ships have been hijacked—the latest number he told me this morning—ransomed off or still being held.”

  “How does he know that?”

  “He makes phone calls. To Billy, the bad guys are the lawyers and Mohammedan terrorists. He always calls them that, Mohammedans. At first he thought it was al Shabaab, the strict Muslim gunmen. They’re supposed to be against piracy, but Billy says bullshit, they’re taking a cut like everybody else. He told me al Shabaab means ‘young guys’ and calls them ‘the lads.’ He got that from the BBC.”

  “But if Idris and his guys are doing all the work—”

  “Billy says Idris is afraid to complain.”

  Dara shook her head. “He doesn’t know Idris.”

  “Billy says they’ll shoot him and get somebody else.”

  “But Idris is having a ball hijacking ships.” Dara paused. “There was something on the Internet about middlemen, lawyers handling the ransom negotiations from Nairobi, even London. Billy thinks the lawyers represent terrorists?”

  “Or they don’t know who they represent, or care. Billy can be terribly boring, but he’s not dumb.”

  “Maybe melodramatic?”

  “Serious,” Helene said. “Sometimes he’s so fucking serious it’s scary.”

  “The money’s delivered directly to the pirates,” Dara said, “by boat or dropped from a plane. I’ve seen it.”

  “Billy says they get only part of it that way, for show. It keeps the lawyers out of the news.”

  “Idris,” Dara said, “has never even hinted at someone telling him what to do.”

  “Ask him about it. Maybe Billy’s full of shit.”

  “I don’t know—Idris has always seemed straight with me,” Dara said. “It’s why I like him.”

  “I do too,” Helene said and took a sip of champagne. “The other night at that club in Djibouti, Las Vegas, he asked me to go for a ride. You’d already left, I didn’t know if he wanted to show me the sights or jump me.”

  “He made a move when I was with him,” Dara said. “I told him I don’t do it in cars, even a Mercedes.”

  Helene raised her hand to slap Dara’s.

  “So you went for a ride with him?” Dara said.

  “No, because Ari Ahmed Sheikh Bakar walked in and we started talking. Billy was still after Idris, asking him about his pirates, if they were high when they boarded ships, making it sound like a guy-thing. Idris—he’s so fucking cool—said, ‘They do what pleases them.’ So Harry and I went for a stroll.”

  “I flew in from Paris with him,” Dara said.

  “I know, he told me. The two of you talked all night. So you know more about him than I do.”

  “To me,” Dara said, “Harry’s one of the good guys, if there are any.”

  “That’s what I told Billy after we left the club. Billy said, ‘There is no way to tell who’s good and who’s bad in this fucked-up Mohammedan world.’”

  “He may be right,” Dara said.

  CHAPTER TEN

  NOW THE LAPTOP SCREEN showed cargo ships and the massive Saudi tanker Sirius Star lying at anchor a mile or so off the coast of Eyl, Dara’s camera coming on to them from the sea.

  “Waiting to be ransomed,” Dara said. “I have the names of the ships and where they’re from. The voice-over will say the going rate for ransom payments is between three hundred thousand and three million. For the Saudi tanker, hijacked three months ago with a hundred million dollars of crude oil, the pirates started out asking twenty-five million, but have come down considerably. We’ll have to find out what they’re after now.” Dara said, “There’s the Blue Star, an Egyptian ship and…I think the one straight ahead is the Biscaglia. Pirates attacked the ship and the paid security guards jumped over the side.”

  “You not armed,” Xavier said, “you don’t hang around.” He said, “Now here’s one of those planes nobody in it.”

  “Drones,” Dara said. “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. They fly over at night and take pictures of the hijacked ships.”

  “If they know the ships are here,” Xavier said, “send in some special forces people and take ’em back.”

  “I’d like to show here if we get the chance, ransom money being air-dropped.”

  “We seen them miss once.”

  “Helene said Billy thinks the airdrop is for show. Proof the ships are being hijacked for money. But people behind the pirates—Billy says lawyers and warlords, clan elders—are all getting a cut.”

  “How’s Billy know that?”

  “Helene says he makes phone calls. I’d love to shoot another money drop,” Dara said. “The ransom’s always paid in hundred-dollar bills, none printed before 2000. Somali shopkeepers don’t trust older bills.”

  “And we cut to Eyl,” Xavier said, “to Sayyid Ali Yaro in front of his shop full of expensive men’s attire. Also watches, canned goods, automatic weapons and, down the street, Ali Yaro’s car lot, full of black Toyotas.”

  “He’s saying in Somali,” Dara said, “It’s true, pirates are his best customers, they don’t bother to bargain. They buy high-priced outfits and aftershave. Beautiful women come here to meet our pirates.”

  A Somali on the street appeared on the screen. He’s speaking English, taking his time to be clear, saying, “It surprise me the sea robbers don’t fight among themselves. They know how much each one is paid according to his importance. They don’t harm captives, the crew of the ships. We know this, because we see no bodies wash up on our shore.”

  Dara said, “Next, an open-air barbecue where the restaurant is preparing meals for the hijacked crews. Goat, on a spit.”

  “Goat wouldn’t be bad,” Xavier said, “they called it something else.”

  The screen showed Eyl from the beach and streets of flat, tin-roof structures, some framed from scrap lumber, doors open to show the entire store, and rubble in all the streets, a junkyard, houses rebuilt over crumbling remains; but a human feeling in the colors, a cement house painted yellow, another blue. The camera moved up a street of hovels and beyond, to homes among palm trees.

  “The upper end,” Dara said, “Idris Mohammed’s digs, a tan brick California bungalow that goes on and on, with a patio. The sound of the generators must drive him nuts.”

  “The man has enough power,” Xavier said, “to light New Orleans. Look at the big TV dish up there.”

  “Idris said, ‘Shake a leg with your shooting so you have time to come to my home, please.’ He always says please.”

  “You sound like him,” Xavier said. “You gonna shoot the man in his house?”

  “You are,” Dara said, handing Xavier her cotton bag. “Get the cars in the drive, a Mercedes and a Bentley—Harry must be here—four, no five Toyotas, all of them black.”

  A SOMALI WITH AN AK slung from his shoulder stood close to the open doorway. He stared at Xavier. Then at Dara. Then at Xavier again, looking up at him as he stepped aside.

  Watching the picture on the screen, Dara said, “Remember this guy?”

  “Everybody starin at us like we movie stars.”

 
They watched Dara enter the house, the camera holding on her as Xavier followed to sweep the room in a pan, close to dark in here, low-watt bulbs in the ceiling fixtures. Daylight from the open doorway helped.

  “I shot those blue walls tryin to make out the pictures hangin there. I think they were bare-naked ladies, but it was hard to tell.”

  “I thought they were landscapes,” Dara said.

  IDRIS AND HARRY BAKAR were watching an Al Jazeera newscast on the flat screen across the room, the boys having a scotch, smoking cigarettes and sucking khat, the bottle, the bouquet and a bowl of ice on the stone coffee table between them. They knew Dara was in the room.

  Dara knew it.

  But they stood up to watch the news for several moments before Idris muted the Arabic words with the remote and came for Dara grinning, telling her she made him so happy to see her, took hold of her and kissed both cheeks. He said, “Look who I have, your travel companion, Harry Bakar.”

  Harry was grinning too. He took her hands but kissed only one cheek. He smelled of cologne.

  In the suite watching the computer screen she said to Xavier, “The big grins. Was it the news or were they glad to see me?”

  “I think it was the herb.”

  “Did you talk to Harry much?”

  “Just enough to think he’s okay.”

  “We have to work on the audio, try to clean it up.”

  “I can bring it up. But for now…” Xavier reached over and turned off the sound.

  “I liked Harry’s kaffiyeh,” Dara said, “the way he does desert wear, draped over his hair and around his shoulders, a casual British look with the bush jacket.”

  “Has that way about him.”

  “You think he puts it on?”

  “Takes it to the edge any more he’s over the line.”

  Dara said, “‘Call me Harry, if you will.’”

  “You got him down, Mr. Harry Baker from Oxford.”

  “I said to him, ‘Isn’t it pleasant to relax with a scotch while you make a pitch to end piracy?’”