The Catch: A Novel (37 page)

She’d delayed bringing him from the house until after most of the men had boarded, and she’d stood with him on the sand while the pirogue returned, using Joe with his imposing size to keep him from making one last mad dash to freedom. The captain’s arrival on the dhow was the first that the Somalis had seen of him, and she listened for the nuance in their muttered surprise, searching for a giveaway that might point to a traitor in their midst so as to cut him loose before the journey began, but she found no tells.

Munroe shifted boxes to create space and lay beside the captain, close enough that she’d feel it if he got up to rummage. He turned his back to her and she closed her eyes. For the first time since leaving the
Favorita
, she had no reason to stay awake, nowhere to go and nothing to do, so she allowed heat and time and the rise and fall to lull her down into nothingness.

She woke and slept and woke again, knew time passing by the bodies that came in for water or to utilize the bucket surrounded by cloth as a makeshift head. The heat intensified and then waned again, and when dusk came once more, she rose, gave the captain water, and left for the bow.

They were far within Somali territory now, as much at risk from pirates as the
Favorita
had ever been, their position measured and guided by a pair of GPS units with batteries recharged by the sun. The relaxed atmosphere that had filled the boat at the outset had since been replaced by a subtle low-level tension, and the weapons, stashed and hidden while in Kenyan waters, had appeared in the form of Kalashnikov rifles and ammunition bands worn by each of the Somalis. Natan, not one to be outdone, had taken the display a step further, wearing two sidearms and combat knives sheathed and holstered around his pant legs.

Under other circumstances Munroe would have rolled her eyes, but here his peacocking couldn’t hurt. The
hawaladar
’s men outnumbered hers two to one and she wasn’t certain their instructions were the same as what she’d been led to believe. Trust in the
hawaladar
had come from necessity—perhaps desperation—certainly not out
of confidence in his self-interest or loathing of pirates, no matter how much he professed this to be true.

Munroe wound her way to the bow and stood watching the distance and endless water, thoughts churning with the waves, until Khalid approached, stopped beside her, and offered a bowl of rice cooked in soupy broth. The food was cold, the last of the dinner from the night before, and she sat with him atop a fuel drum, scooping from bowl to mouth with her fingers as he did. His posture and the occasional catch in his breath indicated he’d made the gesture as a way to converse, but instead his face stayed lifted toward land, eyes tracking the scattered crags and rocky outcroppings in the distance, arrows pointing their way toward Garacad.

“You miss your home,” she said, and he glanced toward her just long enough to nod before staring out toward land again.

“You’re from the Mogadishu area?”

“Galkayo,” he said. “It’s not so long since I was there.”

The rush of wind filled in for a reply.

“I didn’t want to leave,” he said. “I had work with the Puntland Maritime Police Force.” He looked at her again and, as if he wasn’t sure she understood the implication, added, “Fighting against pirates.”

She nodded.

“When it ended, I tried other things, but there are few jobs and little money. Abdi has provided a better opportunity for me. I work for him and I send the money home.”

“Your wife is in Puntland?”

He nodded again, continuing to gaze into the distance, as if the closer they got to his homeland, the more the air itself breathed a familiar song imbuing him with a sense of belonging. She envied him that, a place to which he was always connected, a land that was part of him, something she’d never had, never would have:
home
.

“Ali is going to be a problem,” she said. “Yusuf also. Without khat.”

Khalid leaned back and squinted in their direction.

The two men sat, backs to the gunwale—squished as they all
were among the supplies that filled the dhow—but even lazing in the shade playing a game that Munroe didn’t recognize, they showed signs of agitation. The longer they got into the voyage, the more their tempers would wind up, and with weapons so easily to hand it would be a miracle if they made it to Garacad without a death along the way.

“I’ll do what I can,” he said.

With their meager meal finished and only silence to fill the space between the engine and the ocean wind, she stood and refilled her bowl. On her way back to the captain, she paused over Ali and Yusuf, and they blinked up with bloodshot eyes. She nodded and carried on.

When she reached the captain, he was nestled between boxes and the rear bench, on his back, watching Joe at the wheel. Kneeling beside him, Munroe took the knife from her belt and cut the bonds at his wrists and legs. He cocked his head and studied her, rubbed his thumbs over the bands where the rope had worn his skin raw, and then, as if he doubted his good fortune, he said, “Why? What do you want?”

“Nothing,” she said, and handed him the bowl of rice. He hesitated a moment, then accepted it and scooped greedy bites with his fingers, slurping, chewing with his mouth open and dropping grains of yellow into his beard. Munroe turned from him slightly, disgusted.

“We’re in Somali waters now,” she said, “about three miles offshore. You can go overboard if you like. It’s a long swim but doable, although I can’t promise what waits for you if you manage to make it. You could also stay on the boat and try to fight for control, but there are nine of us and one of you, and no hostages here for you to take. Or you can eat your dinner and enjoy the ride and come with us when we attempt to take back your ship. We’ll reach the
Favorita
in probably two or three days.”

Wiping his fingers on his shirt, he set the empty bowl aside and said, “Will you succeed?”

“You’re a soldier,” she said. “You’ve commanded your own men. You’ve seen what we’ve done—the planning, the supplies—and you know what we’re up against. Decide for yourself.”

He harrumphed, as had been his way, but this time, instead of
closing his eyes and lying back to ignore her, he ran fingers and thumb along his beard, combed out the food particles, and said, “Maybe for you there is a chance.”

“Us.”

He nodded, his focus out somewhere beyond Joe. “Yes,” he said. “Maybe for us there is a chance, and when we come back to Mombasa, everything is good for you, but for my problem, she still exist.”

“I’m working on that,” she said, and his face jerked back to hers as if that was the last thing he’d expected.

“Is a possibility?”

“Could be,” she said. “I haven’t decided. The problem is this story has no good guys. Not you. Not me. Not any of the people on this boat, not the armed guards left behind on the
Favorita
. Not the pirates, and certainly not the Russians who want you. Maybe your crew,” she said. “They didn’t deserve this. But the rest of us, we’re all scum of one sort or another. It’s only a matter of degree of scum. You want your problem fixed, but maybe the Russians have a good reason for wanting you. Maybe by giving you to them I do the world a favor, I don’t know. And until you talk, I have no way to know.”

“What is scum?” he said.

“
Svoloch
.”

“Ah.” He studied the open air again. “Swim,” he said. “Swim or try to fight you, or take back my ship.” He was thoughtful for another moment. “The ship, she is the one easier to come home alive.”

“I would think so. How difficult will it be to get her moving if half your crew is dead?”

“Depend on which half. If both engineer are dead maybe I can get oil up, but then it must be someone else to run the bridge.”

Munroe nodded. Paced through the scenarios. It didn’t seem possible that the entire crew had been killed—not based on the news that had come across the wires.

He said, “I help you, we bring her to Mombasa, and yes, you let me go?”

“It’s what I promised.”

“And my problem?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “If I can solve it, I will. Not for you—I have my own reasons—but I still need to know why they want you.”

He sighed, shifted, and fully stretched out, and with his hands now free, laced his fingers atop his belly and closed his eyes. Annoyed, she turned to leave. From behind, his voice said, “You know who is Aleksey Petrov?”

She swiveled back. Sat again. “First deputy minister with the Russian Ministry of Defense,” she said.

“Yes, is who he is now. You know who he is before?”

“He had a military career, then went into the telecom business, and then the ministry.”

The captain opened his eyes. “Is all good on paper,” he said. “And Nikola Goran, you know who he is?”

“I know who they say you are,” she said. “Serbian colonel wanted for war crimes, ethnic cleansing against Bosnian Muslims.”

“Is not so good on paper,” he said, and chuckled. His laugh caught in his throat and he hacked a cough. “I did many things during the war,” he said, and elbowed back up into a half-sitting position. “Many things for which I have pride, and many things for which there is shame. But I did not make the mass graves and the killing and the genocide for what they say of me.”

Munroe nudged space free against the nearest box, close enough that she could see the lines on his face, could read his expressions and body language, but not so close that she crowded him. He stopped talking when she shifted nearer, so she closed her eyes and tipped her head back against the boxes, waited for him to begin again, knew he would—everything she’d said and done to him over the past weeks had been to soften him for this moment.

“Do you know of Bijeljina?” he said.

She shrugged. Opened her eyes a sliver.

“And of the foreigners who came to fight in the war?”

She nodded. This she knew from the time she’d spent in that part of the world: the three basic divisions that had fought in the divided Yugoslavia, and the foreign support that came to them along
the same ethnic and religious lines. Muslims had rallied to the aid of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Catholics to the Croats, Orthodox to the Serbs: long-standing ties and alliances that ran so far into history they’d been the start of World War I. The alliances hadn’t changed much since and so beckoned foreigners into a war in which over two hundred thousand Muslim civilians were murdered and two million more were made refugees—volunteer armies and mercenaries fighting along historical fault lines.

Outside governments disavowed and distanced themselves from official involvement, but it was no secret that weapons and advice funneled in from abroad: Russian and Greek to the Serbs, Western European and U.S. to the Croats, and Muslim to the Bosnians.

“I was in Bijeljina during the killing,” he said. “Is worse in life than what you read in reports. Serbians have close connection with Russia, you know this, yes? Aleksey Petrov, he is in Bijeljina also.”

He paused, as if waiting for her to prod him for more or to ask for clarification, but she didn’t. “Aleksey came as consultant,” he said. “Soldier consultant. Unofficial, of course. No uniforms, no official documents, but he fight with us like soldier, same as us, courtesy of Mother Russia.” The captain tapped a forefinger to his temple. “Aleksey is not so right in the head, I think. He likes the killing too much. Is sport for him, not war. Was not only Aleksey who did killing in Bijeljina, but he did much, and he gave orders and when at first soldiers don’t listen, he make the first kill and then make many more.” He paused again and when he still received no response from her, said, “Do you see?”

“I really don’t,” she said. “It’s an interesting tale, but it doesn’t answer the question of why your ship was hijacked. That war is twenty years old and last I checked, you, not Aleksey Petrov, are the wanted war criminal.”

“There are pictures,” he said.

“You have pictures of Aleksey in Bijeljina?”

“I know they exist. Before the war end, I go back and I find them. Was not so very easy, you think.”

Munroe stayed quiet for a moment, processing, filling in the blanks of what he hadn’t said, and in a roundabout way the attack on the
Favorita
began to make sense. “Nearly two decades,” she said. “Why now?”

“You know,” he said.

“Pretend I don’t.”

He sighed and closed his eyes, and annoyed at his sudden return to acting coy, she kicked his foot. He opened his eyes again and grinned, as if to say he knew he’d gotten under her skin, and as much as she played like she didn’t care, he wasn’t an idiot.

She said, “A man like Aleksey Petrov wouldn’t care about being blackmailed—it’s not like he
earned
that position or got voted into it. No one cares about anything he’s done in the past—especially not something that happened in Bosnia when Russia sided with the Serbs in the first place. No one is going to fire or arrest him.”

“Maybe arrest,” the captain said. “If I take pictures to tribunal, maybe there is some problems for him. There are many pictures. Very bad pictures. Small problems for here, but in Russia small problem with right people is still a big problem for wrong people.”

“The weapons in the hold came from him?”

“A way to make retirement,” he said. “Sell to South Sudan, push through Somalia, and then I find an island and I am finished.”

“Mombasa is an island,” she said. “You got close.”

He choked on a half laugh and waved at her. “You try to make funny.”

“Sometimes it works,” she said. Then, after a pause, “So Aleksey wants you dead.”

“Maybe alive and dead at same time. As I say, killing for him is sport.”

“You knew that before you tried to blackmail him.”

“Yes,” he said, and sighed. “I send him e-mail of few pictures. I don’t know what will come of it, but he is in a good position to get me what I want, is an opportunity, I give a try. I use fake name and fake e-mail and fake phone. I work with people to make buffer so he can’t find me.”

Munroe understood then the purpose of the arms in the hold; the Trojan horse that led one piece of scum to another, and the reason no mention of the weapons had been made was because no one who knew about them even cared.