Dead Centre (30 page)

The three Somali men were in rags. Two lay down; one sat back against the wall. Their faces were blank; the abuse from the kids no longer registered.

BB sat on the far side of them. He also had his arse in the sand, his back to the wall. Elbows on his knees, his head rested on his hands.

The two Somali women were stuck in the corner, on their own, squatting on their haunches. One of them was crying. Her head jerked with every sob. The other, sobbed-out, simply looked down at the ground.

I moved along the wall to get closer to them. I was soon only a couple of metres away from Tracy. I could hear her singing gently to Stefan. ‘Three Blind Mice’. He still had his eyes closed. She sensed somebody above her. Maybe she’d become aware of my shadow on the sand. She looked up at me, tears in her eyes.

‘Help us … please … help us …’

Her tears carved tracks through the layers of sand and dust on her face. Her lips were cracked and baked, but she was still beautiful. ‘Please … help my son …’ She reached up towards me.

All I could do was look. I turned my head towards BB. Was he in any condition to fight his way out?

He looked at Tracy as he heard her begging, then stared straight at my blue mesh.

The kids found something new to howl about.

He stayed completely focused. ‘Why don’t you shut the fuck up?’ he said to them. ‘And what are you looking at, you fucking bitch?’

Tracy struggled to her feet. Her hands gripped the bars less than a foot away from my face.

‘Please help us … my baby … my son …’

I didn’t want to look at her directly. We were too close. She might see my white skin through the mesh. As I looked away I could see why the kids had gone noisy again. Ant and Dec were being dragged out of the building to be put on display with the rest of them.

Both had just a day or so of stubble, and were in much better condition than the others. That said, they’d still had a good kicking. Ant had cut and swollen lips. Dec had a black eye.

Their AS escorts pushed them hard into the dust. The kids laughed, then screamed like banshees. The older locals were silent. I had the feeling they’d seen it all before.

Tracy’s hands reached through the bars to try and grab me. I jerked back. She missed me by a couple of inches, then turned her attention to Awaale.

‘Please help my son … please …’

She collapsed sobbing as the truth dawned. We weren’t going to help. Nobody was. Her hands slid back through the bars.

The two AS hard men had had enough. They got to their feet and shouted at the kids to fuck off. Then they headed our way. They grabbed Tracy and flung her back onto the ground. Stefan was curled up in his own little world. It was like he’d pulled the duvet over his head and was praying the monsters would go away.

BB couldn’t seem to decide whether he hated the AS or the audience more, so he turned on both of us. ‘Yeah, go on, fuck off! Cunts …’

One of the AS lads picked up a handful of sand and stones and hurled it at us.

We got the message. We moved away. The kids ran off to join the others going into the
madrasah
, dragging their deformed mates with them. Hundreds of years before the Christian West switched on to the possibility, Muslims had figured out the world was round. They also knew the distance to the moon, and that the earth moved around the sun. Islamic schools were set up to teach mathematics, astronomy and philosophy as well as the Koran. I somehow doubted that this particular school was keeping up the good work. Judging by their performance a few minutes ago, they’d had the Koran drummed into them word for word, and been taught the hard-line AS interpretation of the text. Their generation of Somalis would know nothing else.

Awaale followed me past the court-house and down towards the harbour. Once I got there I’d turn left, back to the skiff. I needed to gather my thoughts.

It had all the makings of a weapons-grade gang-fuck, but at least BB sounded up for a fight.

25

THE SKIFF WAS still where we’d hidden it. There were no new footprints coming towards it or going away. The surf had washed away the drag marks.

I’d moved out of the bunker and far enough into the scrub so we wouldn’t be connected with the boat if it was found. Awaale and I were sixty or seventy metres away from the cache, but still close enough to the shore to see anybody coming up the beach towards us.

I took off my
burqa
and draped it between two spiky bushes to create some shade. I wasn’t talking. My throat was dry. My body needed food and sleep. But all that still had to wait.

Awaale followed my lead. He whipped his
burqa
off and made a shelter next to mine. I stretched out in the sand. Within seconds my clothes were riddled with thorns and bits of brush. Awaale joined me. His shirt was soon covered in shit as well. He panted for breath as he reached for his cigarettes. The packet was soaked through. He stared at it in disgust and tossed it to one side.

I dug the Solar Monkey out of my day sack, opened the clamlike device to expose the photovoltaic cells and pushed it out into the sunlight. Awaale watched. He was attempting to reconcile himself with having to go without nicotine as well as water. I wiped my eyes, trying to avoid filling them with sand. It was fucking miserable.

‘Check my adaptors. See if you can charge your phone up as well.’

I lobbed him the bag of jacks that had come with the thing. Mottled with sand, my hand looked like I had some kind of skin condition.

‘Awaale, why are so many kids here malformed? They’re everywhere – the lads near yesterday’s dust-up, and now the ones outside the
madrasah
today. What’s wrong with them?’

‘I will tell you what’s wrong with them, Mr Nick. They are diseased – they have a disease that comes from your world.’ His face clouded. ‘We have no government. Our coastline is unprotected. Most importantly for your people, it is unmonitored.’ He waved towards the beach, to where the surf came crashing onto the sand. ‘It looks like a holiday brochure. But the water is polluted. It has become the dumping ground for your toxic waste. Of course there will be no successful prosecutions of your big companies for this. So our children are born … the way you see them. You, the West, have done that.’

There was a deep sadness in his eyes. But also, for the first time since I’d met him, I saw the rage in his heart.

‘Your factory ships sucked all the fish out of our sea. Your toxic waste killed everything else. So our fishermen became pirates to feed their children. To feed their children who are born like sick goats and die before their time.’

He busied himself finding the jack he was after, allowing his anger to subside.

‘Mr Nick, my job is done now. I’ll wait here for you. I’ll get you back to the airport. But what can
you
do? You have so little time before your friends are killed …’

I sat up, like he’d just given me the good news with a cattle prod.

He pulled a shoe from his belt and extracted the folded sheet of paper. ‘Tonight, it says, the criminals will be punished. After Maghrib. The Wahhabis – the advocates of Sharia law – they’re very strict.’

He started reading. ‘The Islamic Sharia Court of Merca District confirms that one man will lose his hand for stealing from another man’s house. Two men and two women have committed
zina
.’

‘Adultery?’

‘Yes. But it’s not like you think. Having sex with someone and not being married to them, that’s adultery to the Wahhabis. All of them will get
ramj
.’ He hesitated. ‘Do you know what that means, Mr Nick?’

The sweat on my chest and back went cold. I suddenly knew what those spot-lit holes in the ground were all about.

‘I can give it a fucking good guess.’

‘They’ll be stoned to death. They’ll be buried up to the neck, and then stoned.’

‘Tracy and Justin too?’

‘The same. They too have committed
zina
.’

The film on the memory chip replayed itself on the screen inside my head. ‘They think they have committed adultery …?’

‘She has another man’s child, Mr Nick. The Wahhabis. They’re crazy people.’

‘What happens to the boy? There are only six holes …’

‘He will live at the
madrasah
. He will become al-Shabab.’

‘What does it say about the other two white guys?’

‘Nothing. Do you know them?’

‘They came to do what I came to do – get the three of them out. But you were right. There’s no negotiating with these fuckers.’

Ant and Dec must have been linked into the same int as Jules had.

‘It gives me no pleasure to be right about that, Mr Nick. What is to be done? The
ramj
is tonight, after prayers.’

I took a breath; gathered my thoughts. ‘OK. Here’s the deal. You call Erasto. Tell him I need help to free my friends. Tell him I need as many men as he can send.’

He shook his head. ‘No, Mr Nick, it won’t happen. These people, they are not just crazy. They are
very
bad people. Erasto pays to keep them away. He will not—’

I pointed a finger at him. ‘Tell him I’ll pay him to fight them.’

He still shook his head. ‘No amount of money will persuade him.’

‘Tell him he can have the yacht as well. Fuck it, he can have every yacht out there, if he wants.’

‘Mr Nick, it wouldn’t be worth it to him. It would be war.’

‘So what have you got now? Peace?’

Awaale turned onto his side. ‘I am truly sorry. You’re going to have to do this thing yourself. I will wait here. I will make sure the skiff is ready to take you back, to collect my money. But Erasto will not help. He wouldn’t even listen to me. I am not my father.’

I glanced at the little red light on the Solar Monkey. ‘Well, get him on the phone then. Call your dad.’

‘My father?’

‘He’s got the pull around here, hasn’t he? Get your phone out, for fuck’s sake. Call him.’

I left him to it as I scrambled out of the shade. I didn’t want Awaale to listen in on my next conversation.

26

FRANK, AS ALWAYS, answered in two rings.

‘I’ve found them. They’re alive. But there’s no way I can negotiate. If we don’t act now, they’re going to be dead by this evening.’

If Frank’s heart missed a beat, he wasn’t giving any sign of it. Part of me was starting to admire this guy. ‘How much?’

‘Three million, one hundred thousand dollars. In hundreds. I want the one hundred thousand separate from the rest, so when the three million’s handed over, it won’t be spotted.’

‘OK.’

‘I want it at the airport, soon as. Keep that aircraft on standby. It needs to be fuelled up, ready to go.

‘I’m trying to get the clan to help us. If you don’t hear from me by first light tomorrow morning, then I’ve fucked up.’

‘OK.’ He said it like he was agreeing to a pizza delivery.

There was a silence. I’d said all I needed to.

Frank filled it. ‘You’ve seen Stefan, yes?’

‘Yes, Frank. I told you. He’s alive. Get the money to Mog so I can keep him that way.’

‘Is he hurt? Is he ill?’

‘As far as I can see, he’s all right. He was with his mother. She’s looking after him. She’s comforting him. She’s thinking only of him.’

I let the message sink in for a moment.

‘There’s one more thing, Frank. If all goes to plan, I’ll find out what our problem was in the UK – who the guys were, the ones following me.’

I might have heard him sigh. ‘That would be good, Nick. Thank you.’

‘It’s not only for your benefit. I don’t want Tracy and Stefan lifted again, do I? I don’t want to go through this shit again.’

I closed down the phone. I still had to manage Frank’s expectations. And I still didn’t know which way the arch poker player was going to jump. For all I knew, he might choose to fuck over Tracy and BB and lift Stefan from the
madrasah
later. That wouldn’t be good enough for me. I had a promise to keep.

I dialled Anna. Things were about to get busy.

It didn’t even go to voicemail. A female voice waffled at me in Arabic. I knew I didn’t have a wrong number, so she must have been telling me that Anna’s mobile either didn’t have a signal or was switched off. I closed down. It had to be out of signal. Anna’s mobile was linked into her bloodstream.

Back in the bunker, Awaale was talking to his father. ‘He’s come back.’

I crawled under the
burqa
and got the sweat-covered mobile to my ear.

‘Mr Awaale?’

‘Mr Nick, you are—’

He sounded half asleep. There was no time to fuck about.

‘Your son has told you that I need some help?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Mr Awaale, with respect, please listen. Hear me out. See if what I say makes sense. If it does, I need you to talk to Erasto. Persuade him that helping me helps him. And for your time, I will pay you twenty-five thousand dollars, the same as I will pay your son. He can send it to you. You have my word.’

I heard him rustling about. Now that I had his attention, he was probably sitting himself up against his pillows.

‘Mr Awaale, I can offer Erasto two million US if he sends all of his guys to Merca today to help me rescue the three people I’ve come for. Erasto knows who I’m talking about. Whatever commission you need to share with him is up to you.’

There was silence as some serious thinking went on in Minneapolis.

‘Mr Nick, it will cost you more than that. This is very, very dangerous.’

‘There will be more. Erasto can take back the yacht that al-Shabab stole from him. Tell him there are also three pleasure boats here, as well as several cargo ships. He can take as many as he wants. Tell him that if he keeps paying al-Shabab, he’s only delaying the inevitable. He’s going to be fighting them at some stage. They will not want to stay out of his part of the city for long.

‘So why not carry the fight to al-Shabab? Why not show what great fighters and strategists he and his men are, with a preemptive strike? Hit them where they feel safe. Show them that he won’t stand for them coming in and taking over the part of the city that belongs to Erasto.