The Catch: A Novel (8 page)

She studied her hands and felt the blood, a stain that she couldn’t
wash away no matter where she went or the distance she ran. Death followed her, embraced her, and beckoned her. She’d become one of Pavlov’s dogs, salivating for blood when her emotional dinner bell was rung.

Munroe stood and reached beneath the captain’s head for her vest, pulled out the picture pack, and held the photo of Miles Bradford close. She’d been forced to join forces with him on a job that hadn’t turned out as they’d expected. They’d worked together a few times since, had risked their lives for each other, and killed to keep the other safe. Had lived together as lovers. “You have a gift and you have heart,” he’d once said. “Let them serve you.”

She’d killed again since then, several times over, sullying herself while cleansing the world, and had finally said good-bye when that seemed to be the only way to stop the pain. The strings of attachment to him pulled at her even now, half a world away.

She hurt, and hated that she hurt.

Whatever peace Djibouti had given her was over. Maybe the run was over. Maybe it was time to go home.

Home
.

Munroe turned the word over inside her head, then shut it down, shoved it aside. Tucked the picture away again, but wouldn’t lie to herself over what this was. In this fear there was no honor, no adrenaline, no release into the path of death, simply cowardice. She’d finally known peace, known happiness in being accepted and loved for who she was, and for the first time in her life, instead of rushing into the arms of what terrified her, she hid from it.

F
OURTEEN HOURS ON
the water, stomach churning and head throbbing from the constant pound against the waves, and Munroe caught her first sight of something solid. A mirage, the glimpse of this thing filtered in and out and finally strengthened into a green-splotched dirt-gray that stretched out long in both directions, and so she turned the bow south.

S
HE WAS DOWN
to the last of her water and twenty liters of fuel when clusters of white and swaths of color along the shore took on the form of construction far too organized, too much in one place, to be Somalia. Munroe turned west again, ventured closer, passed a wide waterway that led inland, and when she finally came upon buildings more Polynesian than African and the only explanation was that at some point she’d crossed into Kenyan waters and had reached something of a resort, she tossed the extra rifle overboard, stuffed the banana clip inside her pack, and slid the remaining rifle behind the fuel containers.

M
UNROE SLOWED AND
continued beyond pristine beaches, past occasional wooden fishing boats, and finally, spotting a jetty stretching into the water, she drew in for a better look.

To the right of the pier a wooden fishing boat sat, sail collapsed, with its bow snug on the white sandy shore, and not far from the fishing boat, three men, barefoot and in tattered T-shirts and cutoff pants, watched Munroe’s approach with open curiosity. She assumed the boat was theirs, although the pier itself probably belonged to the nearest hotel, or to one of the houses that abutted the beach. Not far off to the left a man washed his bicycle in the ocean, and a few children scampered along the sand, chasing one another in shrieking laughter that she could hear even as far out as she was.

Beyond this, the area was thick with the impossible-to-hurry that so often accompanied detachment from urban life; laid-back quiet that said wherever this was, it wasn’t anywhere near a big city; a place where violent crime was nearly nonexistent, and where a local face was enough to keep curious, entrepreneurial hands from running off with fuel and machine parts.

Munroe slipped in along the far end of the pier and, finding a place to tie off, cut the engine, tossed the lines up, and climbed after them.

She glanced again at the three men on shore, stretched her legs,
and worked out the kinks in her neck while measuring the responses in their body language, the nuances of their expressions. Adjusted her posture to reflect the no-hurry of the heat, and with hands in her pockets, strolled toward the front of the pier.

The men by the fishing boat, leaned back on the sand, stopped talking as she approached. She paused a few feet away and looked out over the water, measuring minutes with the hands of African time, and finally greeted them in English. She would have tried Arabic next, then Somali if the first two failed, but the one who appeared to be the youngest among them—eighteen, nineteen tops—responded in kind.

She nodded toward the sailboat. “Is that yours?” she said.

The English speaker motioned to the man at his left. “My friend boat,” he said, and then staring at Munroe’s black cargo pants and boots: “You army man?”

“On holiday,” she said.

He smiled, stood, and said, “You want private tour? I know good fishing, pretty place. Or maybe nice lady, I have sister, you come meet her.”

Munroe smiled wide enough to show teeth. “I might,” she said, and since he’d saved her the necessity of making small talk before moving to business, she turned toward the ocean and nodded in the direction of the waterway. “How far does it go?”

“She go all way around island.”

“You know the island well?”

“Know Lamu Island very good,” he said. “Know all islands very good.”

Munroe nodded, turned toward the water again, and let the quiet speak. “I could use a guide,” she said finally, “and a watchman. Do you and your friends want work?”

“What is watchman?” he said.

“A guard. For the boat.”

“You want
askari
?” he asked, and without waiting for a response he turned to the others and spoke to them in a language with which
Munroe wasn’t familiar but that pinged inside her head and sent sparks of Arabic and English and German colliding against each other.

The English speaker pointed to one of the men still seated and said, “Mohamed, he work five thousand shilling for day.”

“And you?” she said. “What’s your rate?”

He smiled. “I go five thousand shilling for day.”

The men had told her where she was and that was what she’d needed. Hands still shoved into pockets, she said, “Let me think about it,” and turned and walked for the pier.

Behind her the discussion started up again; got louder, carried closer.

“We go three thousand shillings for day,” the first said.

With no idea what the dollar-to-shilling exchange might be, she pointed to one man first, and then the other. “Two thousand, two thousand,” she said, and the English speaker stuck out a hand.

“I am Sami,” he said, and Munroe shook on the understanding that she’d just been robbed. She turned to glance at the setting sun. “I have no shillings,” she said. “Does Lamu Island have a bank?”

“Yes, closed now,” Sami said. “I have friend, he buy dollars, give good price.”

She had enough fuel to get through the night, and hotels would probably accept dollars.

Munroe turned toward the boat, toward the captain, still unconscious, deteriorating from heat and dehydration. There hardly seemed a point in trying to get him medical care, but if she didn’t, she might as well just slit his throat.

Munroe clenched her fists, pushed back the invisible blood that stained her palms, and said, “Where is your friend?”

“In Lamu Town.”

“Do we take a taxi? Bus?”

“No car on island, only donkey. We go your boat.”

“I need a hospital first,” she said. “Do you have one of those?”

“We have.”

She nodded toward Mohamed. “You take me to the hospital and he brings the friend with the good price to meet us.”

Sami turned to interpret for Mohamed, their dickering started up again, and after a minute of back and forth Sami said, “He show you hospital, I bring my friend,” and so Munroe swung her arm wide toward the pier, gestured Mohamed to the boat, and to Sami said, “Bring a liter of drinking water with you when you come.”

Munroe followed Mohamed’s guidance back to the waterway and farther up the island’s coastline until they passed a collection of small resorts and hotels. Mohamed waved toward the beach and in a tone that was more explanation than instruction said, “Shela,” as if it had some importance, and perhaps to him it did because he believed she was a tourist.

She acknowledged him with a nod.

In an area this remote, where there were resorts there also had to be a landing strip and a place where commerce and money changed hands and where she could buy fuel and supplies. Beyond the hotels the shoreline thickened into foliage again, and by the time Mohamed pointed and nodded, waved and urged Munroe toward the shore, she’d still seen nothing that could stand in for what Sami had referred to as Lamu Town.

They coasted on momentum into the shallows. Mohamed hopped out, waded ahead, and used the lines to drag the boat until the bottom scraped.

Munroe unlaced her boots and pulled them off. Draped them over her shoulder, nudged her vest out from beneath the captain’s head, picked up her pack, took everything with her over the bow, and trudged up the beach toward a building that backed up to the sand.

Around the front under the last of the day’s sunlight, Lamu District Hospital greeted Munroe in big painted letters. The area was quiet, no crowds milling about the main entrance, and she continued on through an open walkway with dirty whitewashed walls and patterned brick that allowed the ocean breeze to circulate and keep the smell of rot, sickness, and overripe body odor to a minimum.

In a layout similar to that of so many provincial hospitals and clinics on the continent, the structure was courtyard-style, with concrete floors where there wasn’t dirt, and under the porticoes on rough-hewn benches women in color-splashed
abayas
and in tribal wraps held sickly babies and small children.

Munroe found a nurse who spoke English well enough to understand her problem and mediate in locating a doctor; then she sat on the concrete and pulled her socks and boots back on. The nurse returned with a man Munroe pegged for a volunteer. Light-skinned, dark-haired, and with several days of beard stubble, he wore faded scrubs and the look of numbness that often attached to foreigners who, working too long in impoverished conditions without supplies and equipment, were forced to witness sickness and death they would otherwise have been able to prevent. He greeted her in fair English and with an air of forced patience.

Within his words of introduction Munroe heard the accent and for her own benefit answered in Italian, utilizing language, that special form of magic that increased in potency the farther the spell was cast from where it was expected. The doctor’s expression shifted into a cautious smile, and in micro increments his posture relaxed with relief, almost as if he’d been holding his breath.

Munroe mirrored his response, shook his hand. “
Ho bisogno del vostro aiuto
,” she said. “I have an unconscious man in a boat, can I show you?”

On the shore Munroe climbed into the boat and the doctor followed. While Mohamed waited on the sand, she shone the flashlight down onto the captain, who might already be dead, and then handed the light to the doctor.

He knelt and, as Munroe had done earlier, shone the beam in the captain’s eyes. Then he pinched at his skin, then picked up his wrist, and listened through the stethoscope. He turned toward Munroe. “He’s still alive. No sweating. Rapid heartbeat, probably low blood pressure,” he said. “How long has he been like this?”

“I found him drifting,” she said. “I’ve had him for about twenty hours.”

“He needs fluid urgently,” the doctor said. “Needs to have the head wound stitched, but fluid is an emergency.”

“I’m on my way to Mombasa,” she said.

“In Mombasa they have better equipment, but you can’t take him like this.”

“How long would you keep him?”

“At a minimum, twenty-four hours for the dehydration. But even after that he’s not in any condition to travel.”

“I can’t stay in Lamu,” she said. “If you want, I will leave him.”

“Better not,” he said.

“I can wait for twenty-four hours, but not more than that. I’m traveling by sea—how long to Mombasa by car?”

The doctor pursed his lips and blew a long exhale. “These roads?” He shook his head. “It depends on the day. Twelve hours? Eighteen? Could be three days if there are issues.”

She felt his exhaustion, the Third World weariness. “There are always issues,” she said, and he nodded, wiped his forehead.

“All right then,” she said. “I’ll cover the expenses for his stay for as long as I’m here.”

“You know how it works with medical?”

“Yes,” she said, and knew all too well. Different part of the continent, but the same concept everywhere: Except for the rare clinic that catered exclusively to foreigners and to the rich, hospitals in Africa worked on a payment-first basis, and it wasn’t unusual for the injured and dying to pass away unadmitted because they didn’t have the money to put up front to get in the door.

“I’ll get you a list,” he said. “I’m already off for the night, but
when you have the supplies, ask for help at reception and they will come get me.”