Chasing the Storm (22 page)

And then it was over, and they all filed out.

May 14

Three days later, they were moving through the Straits of Gibraltar, with huge vessels on either side and ahead of them. Things were almost back to normal on board. The sailors had free movement for most of the day, though they were locked into their rooms at night. But the Siberian commandos were nowhere to be seen. Ivan said they’d all been put in the hold together. The new Russian commandos took them their meals.

On the morning of the 14th, as they were passing Sardinia on their left, Ludo came and sat on the steps of the galley and lit a cigarette. “God, that tastes wonderful,” he said as he sucked in a giant lungful of smoke. He expelled it slowly, with his eyes closed, then shook his head and smiled. “Being a hostage in the middle of the Atlantic is not a problem. Thin soup is not a problem. But giving up smoking – I was about to kill someone, seriously.”

Dmitri was kneading dough. “So where are you going?” he asked. “You’ve been everywhere. Are you going to choose somewhere new, or …”

“Bujumbura,” Ludo said. “No questions about it.”

“What the fuck? Where is Buj … Buja …”

“Bujumbura. The capital of Burundi, in central Africa. I was there once, a hundred years ago, doing a run for some French assholes. It’s a little town at the edge of Lake Tanganyika, nestled in the foothills of the Mountains of the Moon. Cheap French food in little restaurants along the lake. Cheap wine. The best coffee in the world. Tutsi girls – imagine a whole city filled with supermodels. It’s unbelievable. And no one knows about it.”

“Burundi. Wasn’t there a war or something there?”

“There was. For about six or seven years. Similar situation to Rwanda: Hutu, Tutsi. But things are calmer now, and there is really no danger at all. Or less danger than joining Captain Tamm’s crew, at any rate. Where are you going to go?”

Dmitri plucked at the dough. “I’m not sure. I have to look at a map. The world’s a pretty big place.” But the truth was that he was terrified. The crew was his family and the thought of giving up the relationships, and the only life he knew, made him panicky.

May 13

Rygg woke, from a dream that he was on an endless train journey, into morning sunlight as soft as cotton. The lace curtains on the balcony windows belled into the room and reflections off the sea coiled and meshed on the ceiling. He looked over at Lena. She had thrown off her sheet. She was like a mermaid washed in from the sea, or a fallen angel, with an ethereal beauty. Her pale hair lay mussed on the pillow and her hand lay loosely on her flat belly. She was wearing lavender panties that concealed nothing at all. He ran his bandaged hand across the stubble on his chin and his hairy gut, feeling like a mutilated troll ogling some princess in a fairy tale. Groaning, he got up and went to the balcony. The light blew across the tops of the waves. A few cars were out on the esplanade, and a horse carriage went clip-clopping past. Fishermen sat at intervals on the sea wall.

After a while, Lena joined him. She was dressed and had put her hair up. She looked at him sleepily.

“I’m hungry,” he said. “Want to see if we can get some breakfast?”

She nodded.

They went out into the streets and wandered for a while, coming across Midan Saad Zaghloul, a large green square in the center of the esplanade. The focus of the square was a bronze statue of a man in a fez striding toward the sea. Palm trees rustled all around. As they passed the statue, someone called, “Torgrim! Lena!” and they looked up. At an outdoor table across the street, Marin and Sasha were sitting, eating breakfast. Marin held up his coffee cup. “Torgrim,” he called. “This coffee is fantastic!” The café had awnings over the sidewalks, beneath which were set wicker tables and chairs with white canvas cushions.

Rygg and Lena ran across the street. Lena threw her arms around Marin and kissed him over and over. Rygg grinned and patted Sasha, who was drinking orange Fanta, on the back. Lena babbled at Marin in Russian, and he tried to extricate himself from her embrace. “Sit, sit,” he laughed. “I will tell you the whole story.”

So Rygg and Lena had coffee and tea while eating their breakfast and Marin told them what had happened, enjoying another cup of coffee while doing so. After he’d discarded the tickets, the mustached station security guard had taken them to a little room at the back of the station. There they were placed in the charge of a kid with an AK-47 while the security guard went to get his superiors. They weren’t even handcuffed, just told to sit on some wooden chairs.

Marin told the boy that he’d lost his wallet and passport. The boy, who was delighted to practice his English, was sympathetic – his sister had once lost her identification papers and it had taken a full year of trips to various offices and bribes to get her new ones. Marin let him talk for a while before asking if they could possibly have some tea. The boy unlocked the door and leaned out. But before he could call, Marin was on him. He dragged him back into the office, gagged him with some wadded papers tied with string, and stripped off his jacket, pants, and cap. Using the telephone cord, he bound the boy hand and foot. Then he put on the boy’s uniform, slung the AK-47 around his neck, and they marched straight out of the office, Sasha in front, and Marin holding him at gunpoint. As they rounded a corner, they heard voices and shouting behind them.

Marin told Sasha to run. He set off through the station. Marin dashed after him, waving the gun and shouting, while people scattered left and right. In the parking lot, Marin caught Sasha, and marched him over to a taxi. He ordered the driver out at gunpoint, shoved Sasha in, and they tore out through the gates of the station. In the rear-view mirror, he saw the mustached guard, with three elderly policemen, trot panting into the parking lot. The evicted taxi driver picked himself up off the tarmac and tottered over to them, gesticulating. But by that time, Marin and Sasha were well away.

They ditched the taxi and the disguise after six blocks, leaving the car in the parking lot of a Greek orthodox church, and the gun and uniform under the back seat. Then they meandered through a kilometer or two of alleys, getting as far away from the station as they could. By the Nile, they hopped in another taxi and headed south. When they were almost on the outskirts of the city, they got out. They took a minibus farther south, to a town called Beni Suef, which had a tiny train station. There, Marin bought two more tickets for Alexandria, on a third-class train that left Beni Suef at two in the morning. When they halted in the Cairo station, Marin made Sasha pretend to sleep with his face buried in his jacket, and went to the toilet. Peering through a crack in the window, he saw that the station was crawling with security forces. Luckily, though they watched the carriage doors, none of the soldiers thought to enter the train. They’d just arrived in Alexandria an hour ago.

“Wow!” said Rygg when Marin had finished. “You must be completely exhausted.”

“This coffee is helping,” he said. “Can we see your friend this morning?”

“Sure you don’t want a couple hours to rest?”

Marin shook his head. “We have little time,” he said.

Chapter 19

Faisal

After they’d drunk
their coffee, Rygg hailed a taxi and they headed to the west, around the bay and then across to a walled-off section above which the tall angled arms of cranes and the prows of great ships loomed. Across from the port was a huge, crumbling building with stone lions’ heads leaning from the interstices between the windows. The façade was a mess of painted signs advertising various shipping agents and chandlers. Rygg led them inside, up four wide flights of stairs, to a wooden door fortified with brass knobs. Beside the door a brass plaque was screwed into the wall, with “Faisal Tahir Seif al-Din Osman, Shipping Agent” stamped into it. Rygg knocked.

The door opened to an interior so thick with smoke Marin thought at first that they’d stumbled onto a fire. But Rygg disappeared into the smoke and the others followed, with little or no trepidation.

Four men sat before a giant desk that took up half the room. Behind the desk was another man in a pinstripe suit. He looked to be about three hundred pounds. And about a hundred of those, Marin thought, were in his triple chins. All five men were smoking cigars and more cigars lay in an open box on the desk. Also on the desk were a dozen cell phones, an old-fashioned rotary-dial telephone, two open laptops, a newspaper, and a gun.

“
Ya allah
!” The obese man exclaimed as soon as Rygg stepped into the room. “I can’t believe it! Is it the ghost of Torgrim Rygg? Have you returned from the dead?” With a groan, he hauled himself up, leaned across the desk, and embraced Rygg, the ember of his cigar coming perilously close to his hair. Rygg was a large man, but he looked like a schoolboy in the other’s embrace. The obese man shooed his other companions out the door, and bade the four of them to take a seat. “And who are your friends?” he asked.

Rygg introduced Lena, Marin, and Sasha. “And this is Faisal Tahir, one of the most powerful men in Alexandria. He is a shipping agent.”

Faisal chewed on his cigar, shaking his head. “Really, I can’t believe it, Torgrim. I was told by three different people that they saw a burnt out yacht, rented in your name, drifting outside Marseille with two severely grilled corpses onboard.

“I managed to escape. I jumped into the water and drifted around on the cold open sea for fifteen hours or so before I was rescued. Unfortunately my crew wasn’t as lucky.”

“Unbelievable,” Faisal said. “Well, have cigars, please.” He pushed the box toward them and tinkled a little bell. “Tea will arrive shortly.” He had a tinge of a British accent. “Now, I have just met you,” he looked at Marin, “but I think I recognize you from this.” Using the tips of his ringed fingers, he swiveled a newspaper around and tapped a photograph. “Look here. The article says two foreigners escaped from custody in Cairo last night. This is the CCTV picture from Mahattat Ramsis. It is you,
mish kida
?”

They all leaned forward. The camera had caught the two of them running through the main lobby of the train station. Sasha’s face was a white blur, but Marin, under the soldier’s cap, was quite recognizable.

“Yes, that is me and Sasha,” Marin put his arm around Sasha and grinned. “We have had a crazy time. Where does it say that we went?”

“According to the article, you are at large in Shubra. The airports are on full alert.”

“Excellent.” Marin took the cigarettes from his pocket, but Faisal nudged the case of cigars toward him. Marin leaned forward and chose a cigar. He snipped off the end with a pair of gold scissors attached by a chain to the humidor. Faisal leaned across the desk and torched the cigar with a lighter shaped like the Venus de Milo: her head snapped back and the flame emerged from her throat. Marin blew a long stem of smoke at the ceiling, where it frayed into loose fronds.

“So what is it this time, Torgrim?” Faisal said. “More guns?”

“Something much more serious, I’m afraid, Faisal,” he said. “It’s the
Alpensturm
. You know, the ship that was hijacked in the Baltic.”

“
Baad al-shaar
!” Faisal exclaimed. “You’re not mixed up with that?”

“What do you know about it?”

“Everything I have heard is bad. According to one of my chaps – Lebanese, with French connections – it’s carrying nuclear.”

“Does he have proof?”

“None at all. And the latest, you heard, is that the Russians have boarded the ship.”

“Yes, I read that.”

“So tell me everything.”

“I will let my friend do that.” He nodded at Marin, who hesitated a second, the cigar halfway to his lips.

“Tell him everything,” Rygg told Marin. “Faisal is a scoundrel as he will be the first to admit, but you can trust him absolutely.”

So Marin told Faisal the whole story, starting with the Swiss bank account, describing Yuri’s images and what Rygg had discovered in the Ministry of Defense, and finishing up with the gory package in Ataba.

When he described the contents of the package, Faisal leaned back and guffawed, hiccupping gouts of smoke. “Not a very nice present,” he said. “But I have sent a few packages of that sort. It makes an impression, I can assure you.” Then he sobered up. “But why was it a present of Youssef’s head to you and not a present of your head to Youssef?”

Marin nodded. “This of course is what I have been asking myself since Moscow. Why am I still alive? If they knew about Hamburg, about Paros, why am I still alive?”

“And you say no one knew that you left Moscow?”

“Only the driver and the pilot. That is all.”

“So how did they find you in Cairo?”

Marin spread his hands. “I can’t think. It has been troubling me for the last twelve hours and I honestly cannot think of a viable answer.”

“It sounds like you have some problems to deal with, my friend,” Faisal said, turning to Rygg.

“And that’s why we came to you,” Rygg said. “Since you’re the pharaoh of problem solving. Are you willing to do a little calling around for us?”

“Why not,” he shrugged. It was a rather fast agreement to help, despite the demise that so many who tried to help had received.

“Okay, here is what we need. I don’t know if it will be possible. We need to know where the
Alpensturm
is heading. And we need to know what preparations are underway in the destination port.”

“That’s it?”

“Will you be able to find that out?”

“It shouldn’t be that hard. Anything else?”

“Well, as the airports are being watched, we’ll need a way out of here.”

“Torgrim, this is too little. I am ashamed. You must ask me for something more.”

“Let’s start with this, Faisal.”

Faisal shrugged, but from the little swelling in his eyelids and pucker at the corners of his lips, Rygg knew he was pleased. He ground out his cigar in a bucket of sand by his desk, which contained a dozen or so butts like lopped palm stems. Then he leaned forward and with a sweep of his arms gathered the cell phones to him. From the collection he plucked forth eight and arranged them in front of him, side by side. He clasped his fingers together, turned them out and flexed them. There was a series of reports like fireworks as his knuckles cracked. “
Bismillah
,” he muttered. Rygg leaned toward Marin. “Watch this,” he said. And it was extraordinary.

With a grace that belied his bulk, Faisal began playing the cell phones like a piano, clicking through lists, bringing up numbers, snatching up first one, then another, barking into them or whispering to them as if they were tiny creatures he was trying to wake up or lull to sleep. At times he had two phones in each hand, propped between his fingers, and was shouting into all four, and at times he cradled a single phone in both palms and was almost humming to it,
sotto voce
, coaxing it. Most of his speech was in English, some in Arabic, but Rygg also heard French and Italian, and there were a couple other languages in there that he couldn’t place. From time to time, Faisal shoved a phone away from him until there were only three phones remaining. Speaking into two of these, he pulled a laptop toward him. He held the phones to his ears with hunched shoulders and typed on the laptop, then clicked, like a staccato drum roll, with a laser mouse. Finally he discarded two of the phones, though he still manipulated the mouse. One of the phones on the desk rang. He picked it up, then sat back with his eyes closed, listening to someone on the other end, humming every once in a while as if to keep the person going. He gave a short speech, listened again, typed for a while on the laptop, and then threw the phone on the desk as though he was the conductor of an orchestra who had just commanded the last note of the performance.

“Did you time me?” he asked Rygg.

“Twenty-three minutes. You still have the magic, Faisal. I don’t know how you do it.”

Faisal’s bulk seemed to swell. He placed a thick palm flat on his forehead. “All in here, Torgrim. I can’t forget a name or a number. And I have helped many people, so they help me in turn. The world goes around.”

“So tell me. I couldn’t follow everything.”

“Yes. Very interesting. Very, very interesting. This is what we have. The
Alpensturm
was boarded two days ago. It is still in international waters, but moving toward the Mediterranean. I called my contacts in the usual places – Algiers, of course, which is where the original reports said the cargo was headed. Then Latakia, Valletta, Beirut, Piraeus. I even checked with my chaps down at the port here and in Suez, to see if they’d heard anything. But nothing at all. Finally I tried Limassol. This was really my last choice. I mean, Cyprus is actually Europe. None of my boys dock there – it’s too heavily policed, they all follow the rules, you know what I mean. Even Piraeus, Bari, you can bribe those guys. But Limassol – no way. Anyway, I tried Limassol – I’ve got a chap there who was with me at Victoria College. He worked his way up, and is head of immigration. He called his boy at the docks, but turned up nothing. But, listen. He’s the chap who called me back, a minute later. He told me that he’d found something at Larnaca, the smaller port on Cyprus.
Larnaca
, Torgrim. Why Larnaca?”

“You found the
Alpensturm
?” Marin asked, cautiously optimistic.

“Well, not in so many words,” Faisal turned his heavy-lidded eyes to him. “I was looking for berth reservations, between a certain set of dates, and I found something that fit. The right size, the right dates, the right, how might you say …” he grappled at the air with his plump fingers, “the right …
feel
.”

“So you’re not totally certain?” Marin pursued, but Rygg put a hand on his arm.

“Not to worry, Marko. Faisal is a genius. If he says your mother will be on the moon at three o’clock on Tuesday, she will be there.”

“Okay. Well, I think I might be able to tell you why the
Alpensturm
is docking in Larnaca,” Marin suggested, leaning in closer to the desk.

“Tell us,” Rygg said.

“Larnaca is a small port,” Marin told him, “and it is a secondary port. But the
Alpensturm
is a small ship. It doesn’t need a big port. And being out of the way is an advantage. But what Larnaca
has
is a huge international airport that can handle 747s and such.”

“So you think …” Faisal said.

Marin nodded, not even needing him to finish what he was saying. “Can you check that for me?”

“No problem.” Faisal made a call, talked for a few minutes, and set the phone down. He nodded. “This will take longer, Mr. Marin. I have a few people looking into it. They will call me back, today sometime, I am hoping. When did you want to leave Alexandria?”

“Is this evening at all possible?”

“This evening? I hoped you would be my guests for some days.”

Marin shook his head. “We have little time, I’m afraid.”

Faisal nodded sorrowfully. Then he picked up a phone and made a call. He readied another cigar, holding the phone to his ear with his shoulder. Then he said, “
Shukran, ya habibi
,” and tossed the phone onto the pile.

“So?” said Rygg.

Faisal shook his head. “Nothing today, I’m afraid. Tomorrow night at the earliest and even that is uncertain. Torgrim, listen. I have a nice villa out in Mareotis. No one will ever find you there. Private beach. Stay for one day at least.”

“One day. All right. One day, Faisal.”

Faisal took them out to lunch in a private upstairs balcony of the Yachting Club, overlooking the harbor. The waiter trundled a trolley out to their table. On the trolley was a wooden box filled with ice. Nestled in the ice were a couple dozen fish, of all shapes and colors. Taking his time, Faisal chose half a dozen fish, giving detailed instructions. The waiter pried them loose and set them in a bucket and pushed the trolley away.

Rygg and Faisal chatted about old times as they waited for their meals to arrive. The fish came, smelling delicious, and were stuffed with tomatoes and garlic and cilantro, then slathered in olive oil and grilled. There were also a dozen platters of salads: tahini, baba ghanoug, a spicy potato salad, arugula, tiny stuffed eggplants and peppers, various marinated vegetables.

“Welcome to Alexandria!” Faisal said. He began prizing away chunks of fish and setting them onto their plates, saying their names in Arabic. They squeezed halved limes over the fish and prepared to feast. The food was extraordinary.

As they were eating, a phone rang in Faisal’s jacket pocket. He took it out and looked at it, then apologized and held it to his ear. “
Aiwa
?” he said. He listened for a long time without saying anything, asked a question, then listened again. He put the phone back in his pocket.

“Very interesting,” he said. He took a forkful of fish and chewed it slowly.

“Faisal!” Rygg said, exasperated.

Faisal grinned and winked at Marin. He took another bite before he addressed Rygg. “That was my friend Yannis, from Larnaca. He told me something I think you will find interesting.” He paused.

“If you don’t tell me within thirty seconds, Faisal, I will put this fork in your eye,” Rygg informed him.