The Catch: A Novel (16 page)

Long past the thirtieth tone Amber finally answered, breathing the energy of action, of having been awake for a while, from being on the move and throwing parts of a plan into motion.

“Have you found any updates?” Munroe asked.

“Yes,” Amber said, and there was triumph in her answer. “As of late last night or early this morning, the
Favorita
anchored off the coast of Garacad.”

The detail was so opposite of what Munroe had anticipated that she drew a sharp inhale and said, “Garacad? You’re sure?”

“Yeah,” Amber said, and a smile was conveyed so clearly through her voice that Munroe could see it spread across her face—as if after having been cut off from Leo completely, news of any kind, no matter how horrible, created the same sense of excitement as a promise that Leo was alive and coming home. Oblivious to the caution and reticence on Munroe’s end, Amber rushed on.

“There’s not a lot of detail just yet,” she said. “The ship is anchored about two kilometers offshore—typical—crew still on board, about twenty pirates on as well. So far they’re using skiffs to ferry supplies in and out.”

In a bid to clarify what was surely a mistake, Munroe said, “Did the
Favorita
finally turn up on the AIS? Garacad is pretty far north of where the hijacking occurred. It could be a different vessel.”

“Still nothing on the AIS, but the ship is definitely ours. Somalia Report broke the news. They had a couple of images and I compared them against everything we have. They’re grainy, but it’s the
Favorita
, no doubt about that.”

What should have been progress created confusion instead.

Somalia Report was one of the leading sources of information within Somalia and, like Al-Jazeera was to al-Qaeda in the Middle East, an outlet as likely to be contacted by hijackers to report what they wanted disseminated as to report on them; a website that Munroe had repeatedly visited over the past few days and not one whose reporting she could dismiss lightly no matter how little it all made sense. She said, “How did they explain the weapons in the hold?”

“They didn’t.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Nope.”

Munroe replayed the attack on the ship, challenged her own senses, her own experience, rewound and saw through less cynical and jaded eyes, but no matter how she cut it, those weapons in the hold and Leo’s reaction to their discovery had been real.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Amber said, and her tone had a bite.

Munroe didn’t press. Amber had never wanted to believe Leo would involve himself in gunrunning, and still didn’t want to believe it. She said, “What about ransom?”

“They want three million dollars for the release of ship and crew.”

The payoff demand brought another wave of mental dissonance. This was normal and the normalcy was jarring and frustrating: The
normalcy was wrong. If the ship had been taken as a way to get to the weapons, Mogadishu would have been a better bet for a port of call on its hijacked voyage—or any of the port cities controlled by the Islamic militancy, Al-Shabaab—or for that matter, anywhere along the coast where the hijackers could offload what they’d come for. If the
Favorita
had been targeted for the weapons, it wouldn’t be in Garacad right now under the roving eye of Somalia Report correspondents while the hijackers demanded a payment of at least triple what the ship was worth.

“What about you?” Amber said. “Have you heard anything?”

Other than possibly salving her ego after Amber had written off her account of the hijacking, no good could come of telling her of Sami’s murder or that Munroe had something the hijackers wanted. She said, “The people I’m talking to have better access than Somalia Report. It’s just a matter of how long it will take to get them to tell me what they know.”

“Well, we know where the ship is,” Amber said, “and we know what the hijackers want. We can work with that.”

“What’s the status on the hostages?”

“They claim to have already killed two.”

At least this was a detail that Munroe could correlate with her experience on the
Favorita
.

Somali piracy had long since moved away from the methods of the rogue fishermen turned criminals who rarely deliberately harmed or killed their hostages. In its current incarnation, piracy was a calculated, ruthless business where hostages as pawns were routinely tortured and executed. But even so, the brutality, no matter how often threatened, was, barring an adrenaline- or drug-induced accident, typically saved until negotiations stalled and the pirates needed a way to amp up demands. Which meant the two dead had probably been killed during the firefight, and if that was the case, then they were part of Leo’s team, not the ship’s crew. But Munroe kept this to herself.

There were logical explanations for why the presence of the
weapons would have been kept quiet, but there were bigger details missing from the story. “What about armed guards,” Munroe said. “Any mention of them having been on board? Because if these guys were the first to take an armed ship, they’d be all over that, gloating, maybe even exaggerating how big of an army they were up against. The news would be everywhere.”

There was a long pause on the other end, and then with her speech slowed slightly, as if her thoughts had tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and this was the first Amber had seen of the incongruence, she said, “There wasn’t any mention of our team, either.”

Munroe tried to find a fit for this new piece of information and couldn’t, and when she didn’t speak, Amber, almost as if betraying a confidence and certainly betraying the reason she’d stayed on the phone this long, said, “Natan and I are preparing to drive down to see if we can possibly negotiate the team’s release.”

Munroe ran a palm over her face and then looked up toward the sky. “Do you have resources?”

“Not three million dollars.”

“Do you even have a hundred thousand?”

Amber whispered, “No.”

“How far do you think you’ll get?”

“Through Somaliland at least, maybe to Bosaso.”

“That’s kind of out of your way.”

“It’s our best bet for finding someone willing to supply us with a military escort.”

“You’re going to need it.”

“We could really use an interpreter,” Amber said.

If she’d been asked even a day earlier, Munroe might have jumped at the opportunity for no other reason than the adrenaline charge and the linguistic and cultural challenges a drive through Somalia would provide. But Sami’s death had changed her focus, had given her a private war to fight. Whoever had killed him was going to pay a price. She
would
find the murderer and she would take revenge. And although her goal and Amber’s goal were intrinsically linked to the
Favorita
, Amber’s plan was nothing more than a way to be in motion, to provide the illusion of doing something, anything, under the guise of controlling a situation that was chaos.

“How long till you get your resources together?” Munroe said.

“A week, maybe. I’ll pay for your flight if you come with us.”

“That’s kind of a hollow offer, don’t you think? I was due a flight back anyway simply for boarding the
Favorita
.”

“So in addition to the flight, what would you want?”

“I don’t know,” Munroe said. “Let me think about it.”

“Does that mean you’ll come?”

“Probably not.”

“Okay, think about it.”

“It’s a huge risk for not much benefit,” Munroe said. “Especially if you’re planning to carry the cash down with you.”

“We’ll use
hawala
.”

“Fine. So let’s say you manage to get all the way to Garacad. And let’s say that by some hypothetical miracle you manage to sweet-talk the local clan elders into getting you a sit-down with a negotiator or even the guy running the show. And let’s say that miracle expands and you’re actually able to negotiate a release. What happens when they start playing chicken and won’t release the entire team—and you know they’ll do that. What are you going to do then? Take Leo and leave the others?”

Amber didn’t answer, so Munroe pressed on.

“Let’s say you beat all the odds. You get down there, you negotiate, and you pay for the release of your entire team. What’s your exit strategy? You, as the negotiator, are right there. You and the cash and the team have no backup anywhere else. The world’s eyes aren’t on you. There’s no outside pressure to force them to deliver on their promise, nothing to guarantee that after you hand over the money you aren’t all shot right then and there. Or on the way back out by another gang of thieves.”

“What else is there to do?” Amber finally whispered. “There’s no insurance contract. The
Favorita
is a couple of voyages shy of being
broken for scrap, no one’s going to try to ransom it, and you know as well as I do that nobody but the crew’s families give a crap about them. I can’t just sit around wishing and hoping that something will save him—that’s its own kind of death.”

And that was a point Munroe couldn’t argue and wouldn’t even if she could. Amber’s plan was stupid, but at least it was a plan instead of waiting for magic to happen.

“You’re willing to risk everything to save him?”

“Yes.”

“Even death.”

“Yes.”

“Is he worth it?”

“That’s a horrible question,” Amber said.

“You should think about it.”

“Just because you’re pissed that he forced you to go with him?”

“Maybe I see a side of him that you can’t. Maybe this is fate sparing you from something worse by him down the line.”

“I’m finished talking about it,” Amber said.

“All right then, you should try calling.”

“What?”

“Go through Somalia Report for information,” Munroe said. “Find out if the hijackers are even willing to deal with you before you make the trip. If they think you’re bringing money, they might be able to guarantee your safety all the way down, and when you get there is when you tell them you’re working with
hawala
instead. At least it gets you a safe one-way ride. You could also try forcing their hand and get them to bring the team inland. Get them to a larger city in exchange for the payment, then you’d have a better shot at making it out of there—even more so if you were able to secure a military escort in advance.”

If it was possible to hear mental wheels spinning, then that was the sound of Amber’s silence. “Talk to me before you go,” Munroe said. “I have people asking questions and it will take me about that long to get some answers. At least this way if you decide to traipse off
on your Hail Mary mission, you’ll have better information on what you’re up against. You have a pen and paper?”

“Yeah,” Amber said. “Why?”

Munroe glanced toward the road that followed the coast. A blue Land Rover Discovery had parked at the base of the pier and a portly woman wearing a bright green-and-black-pattern muumuu stepped from the passenger side. The man who’d done the driving, who also appeared to play the role of bodyguard, stepped around beside her, and together they strolled down the pier.

“Here’s a way to reach me,” Munroe said. She recited her number for Amber, and then said, “I’ve gotta go. If you don’t hear from me before you head out, call me.”

Munroe shut the phone and raised her hand in a wave for attention. The woman spotted her and swaggered slowly toward the nearest rail and, once within shouting distance, leaned out over the water and called, “This the boat for sale?”

“This is the one,” Munroe yelled, and the woman pointed down the coast toward another boat headed their way. “My man is coming to check her.”

This was the start of a negotiation as predictable as it would be tedious, part of the drawn-out haggling innate to a culture that placed little value on the concept of time; and in the wait, as the approaching boat grew larger and the sun rose higher and began to heat the air, the conversation with Amber, the proposal of driving from Djibouti to Garacad, tumbled around inside her head.

To most in the Western world, Somalia was a single lawless piece of dirt where the battle of Mogadishu and warlords and pirates and starving children all blended into one big impoverished blemish on the map. But geopolitically, Somalia wasn’t one country, it was four or five.

For Amber and Natan, the problems would begin on the other side of Somaliland, the northwesternmost territory, which operated
autonomously as an unrecognized nation with its own government, laws, and currency, and a serene prosperity far removed from televised images of lawlessness; would begin after they’d crossed into the neutral zones that were neither Somaliland nor Puntland and then get worse when they crossed into Puntland itself, a territory that straddled the middle of Somalia and operated as an independent state without any formal declaration of separation.

Puntland was where most piracy originated. The elected government was weak and ineffectual, and Bosaso, a city of over half a million, was its capital. Beyond the big city, the land area was vast and mostly empty, and deep down in the remote and barren heart of the territory, along the eastern coast, was the town of Garacad—silent c—where the
Favorita
anchored.

Clan law kept a fragile order, but when assault rifles were more common than indoor toilets, when foreigners were viewed as a form of currency, two strangers without political connections and protection, who didn’t speak the language or understand the culture, had a solid chance of ending up as hostages or dead, no matter what kind of military training Natan had.

The man with the boat arrived, cut his engine.

The bartering took more than an hour, and once the price was settled, the transaction stretched on for another hour while the driver-slash-bodyguard-now-accountant left to retrieve the money and finally returned with a fat envelope that the boatman ferried out. And when Munroe was satisfied, he returned her to shore.

Beneath the concrete pier, slightly shielded by the pilings, Munroe stashed and scattered half the money throughout her pockets. Then put on her socks, dry from the journey, and her still damp and water-damaged boots, and shoved the rest of the money down out of sight. She strode up the beach to the fronting streets, relatively quiet with the sleepy feel of a small coastal town.