Djibouti (20 page)

A
TAXI DRIVER EVER TRIED
to charge him too much, Jama would place the barrel of the Walther against the man's neck and ask him in Arabic, “Again, please. How much is the fare?” The driver would say, oh, he made a mistake and sometimes wouldn't charge for the ride. One time the driver was slow, maybe wondering if he should jump out, but first asking, “Is this a robbery?”

What's the matter with him? Of course it was a robbery. Jama took his money, drove off in the taxi a few blocks and left it in the street.

He used taxis because he'd left Hunter's banged-up car back of his building, through with it, he believed, and through with his Ivy League outfits. He wore a
kikoi
, a white one that fell past his knees, a scarf he knotted around his head, and had stopped shaving. He dirtied up Hunter's white sneakers, needing fast shoes he ever had to make a run. He hung out in the African quarter till people started asking where he was from, if he was
selling khat. That wasn't a bad idea. He bought up a clump a khat-seller had and went around peddling it marked up some. He believed he was being watched. He didn't know it for a fact, but believing it was enough. Each night he changed where he stayed, holes in the walls called hotels.

He talked to sailors hanging around the docks. One of them told him the LNG tanker was out there in the Gulf of Tadjoura waiting for stores. He heard the crew, the Filipinos, had quit and were looking for ships.

Jama was thinking he should have stayed at Hunter's. Have booze, all the ice he wanted. Food in the freezer. He was sorry he had been hasty about Celeste. Have her stay with him at Hunter's place, back in the saddle again out where a friend was a friend. Wherever that was. If the phone rang he'd say, “Hunter? He went to Egypt. Me? I'm taking care of his cat Putie.” Give the caller shit like that in a nice voice.

He still had a key.

 

H
ARRY WAS CLOSE TO
biting his nails, tempted, feeling a need to get it done. He said to his Somalis, “Come on, let's stay on it, for Christ sake. Check the African quarter, you know what he looks like. You drove all the way from Eyl with him. He could be dressed like an American or he's gone back to being Arab.”

One of the Somali lads said, “I know the back of his head, his hair. I sat behind him two days looking at it.”

The other Somali said he was never in the same car with Jama. “But I know he has hair on his face, a beard.”

Finally they had traced Jama to the rue de Marseille, Harry out of his car wanting to pace, move around, but managed to hold on to himself. His two Somalis stood waiting, smoking
cigarettes. In the dusk, the sky losing its light, the street of apartment houses was already dark. Harry's Bentley, delivered today from Eyl, stood at the curb waiting.

“You're sure he's in that building, staying there.”

“The car is in back, one side of it destroyed.”

“And he was seen driving it.”

“People on the street say yes, he is the one, but not with a beard. Wearing a shirt from a university. But they have not seen him in two days.”

“Then why,” Harry said, “do they think he's there?”

“A woman said she saw him leave and return, leave again and return, two times.”

“How did she know who it was?”

“I told you,” the Somali said, “the one who wears the university shirt appears. He leaves. Now she doesn't see him. But when the same one returns now he is in traditional clothes. He goes out, he comes back.”

Harry said, “How does she know he's the same one who left?”

The Somali said, “He returns to drive away in the car with its side destroyed.”

“Are you sure it's the same BMW?”

“Yes, and the one who lives in this place and owns the car has disappeared.”

“Why is talking to you,” Harry said, “like trying to solve a fucking puzzle?”

His boys had taken a look at the apartment house mailboxes in the foyer and came back with ten names of Frenchwomen, two Frenchmen they said they had heard of, and one American or Englishman by the name of Hunter Newhouse on the third floor, 303. Harry imagined Jama meeting Hunter in a bar, they talk, get along, Jama desperately needing a place to stay. Hunter,
a gentleman and scholar, offers his flat and soon thereafter disappears. If Harry alerted the police to a missing person, he would complicate the ultimate solution, shooting Jama.

He wished he had a bunch of khat to graze on. And told himself
no
. Stay up to the task with another snort of crystal meth.

Harry had made up his mind, the moment he set eyes on Jama he would shoot him. Place the Somalis on each side of the door. One of them raps on it and moves out of the way. Harry would stand facing the door. Jama opens it half asleep…Or stand back from it. He thought it might be a wide hall in a building as old as this one.

The PPK in his hand, the safety off. The door opens…

He could say something to him.

You know why I'm here, old sport
.

But Jama could be holding a pistol, couldn't he? Awakened in the middle of the night…

You don't say a fucking word, Harry told himself. You see him and shoot him. That's it.

“What if when I knock on the door,” one of the Somalis said, “he doesn't open it? He asks who is it, what do I want?”

 

H
E HEARD FOUR RAPS
on the door in the living room, loud, and opened his eyes. No voice came following the raps, like the custom of police at home. Announce themselves and bust down the door. If it wasn't cops it could be al Qaeda.

Jama rolled out of bed in his Levi's and sneakers, the way he slept now, and brought out his Walther from under the sheet. He shoved four 9-mm magazines into his jeans from the night table. Slipped a shirt on over his head and picked up his flight bag from the foot of the bed. He was in the living room when they banged
on the door again, Jama sure there'd be a few of them in the hall packing AKs or Uzis, al Qaeda deadheads serving the contract on him.

He opened the door, swung it open and caught the edge of it in his left hand. He put the Walther on the Somalis and shot each one and shot them again, seeing only one other one left. Jesus Christ, Harry. Harry fired, Jama fired. Both missed. They weren't ten feet apart. Both in a hurry fired again, both moving this time. Jama backed into the room and swung the door closed. He released the Walther's magazine, two left, and shoved a full load into the grip. He looked through the door's peephole and saw Harry standing against the opposite wall holding his gun out in both hands to shoot. Jama believed if he swung open the door Harry would fire and he'd step in the doorway and shoot him. Jama felt the trigger-pressure of his means of staying alive. He looked through the peephole again but didn't see Harry, or know which way he'd gone, right or left. He had a fifty-fifty chance of seeing him or getting shot in the back.

Jama said, “Shit,” and opened the door. He'd of been right: there was Harry, only down at the end of the hall by the
EXIT
sign. So Jama went in the bedroom with his gun and his bag, stepped out the window to the fire escape and ran down it, riding that bottom section as it swung down. He went around to the front of the building and watched the entrance. After a few minutes he stepped into shadow and watched the street. Pretty soon he saw headlights pop on. Then off. A few minutes went by and they popped on again. Now the car was coming from the next block, picking up speed. Jama held the Walther in one hand, stepped out to stand in profile to the Bentley coming at him and fired four shots through the windshield and got to the sidewalk to see the car still coming, Harry firing from his window right-handed. The car swerved to miss trash
cans and kept going, Jama watching it, wondering, Jesus, what's Harry on?

“I had my beaters out,” Harry told Idris the next morning, “scouring Djib for the scoundrel, and he's not two streets away from us all the time. You didn't hear the shooting last night?”

“I was out,” Idris said, laying clothes on the bed to be packed. “I took Dara and Helene to dinner.”

“This was two in the morning,” Harry said.

“We went to a club for dancing, after.”

Harry said, “I had every intention of running him down with the Bentley.”

“It arrived?”

“Yesterday morning. I started for him, I wanted to run over him, and he put four nines with that German gun of his through my windscreen, but into the left side, forgetting the Bentley is a right-hand-drive motorcar.”

Idris said, “So you failed to shoot him.”

“You have to imagine,” Harry said, “how quickly this was happening. He did shoot the Somali lads with me, upstairs at his door.”

“You shot at him?”

“Of course,” Harry said. “We both seemed a bit anxious, exchanging shots in the hall. He went down the fire escape while I was hurrying to get the car. I saw him come out of the building and drove directly at him, flooring the Bentley and shooting from the window. When I missed again I kept going. It was that or stop to reload. But I did have him on the run.”

“Now what?” Idris said.

“This isn't really my game,” Harry said, “I'll probably leave for England in the next couple of days.” He sat down to watch Idris packing.

“How was Dara, in good spirits?”

“She's always herself,” Idris said.

“Which is to say what?”

“She keeps her eyes open, knows what's going on.”

“I'm reasonably certain I could have got on with her,” Harry the Sheikh said, “had my mind not been occupied by Jimmy Jama.”

“You mean the price on his head.”

“Well, that too.”

I
DON'T RECALL
,” B
ILLY SAID
to Xavier, “if I told you I'm blowing up the gas ship tomorrow.”

“I heard you were thinkin about it but nobody had an idea of when. You must have a good reason you want to get to it.”

Billy said, “I'd like to hit the fucker while she's sitting there in the stream.”

The two were stretched out in lounges on the hotel's sea-level pool deck, watching ships pass in the distance barely moving. Billy had on blue bikini briefs, his stomach trying to hide them, his hair a month wilder than when they'd met. Xavier thought Billy was cool in his way, how he knew everything and believed he could shoot up a highly combustible ship and not worry about getting away.

Xavier had on his silk-looking skimpy green trunks.

Billy had his binoculars resting on his stomach and a local map of the Golfo de Tadjoura, both of them smoking Billy's Havanas. Xavier liked the way Billy made judgments, cool about
it in a way Xavier didn't understand, but most often was right how he saw it.

“So you think you'll do it tomorrow,” Xavier said.

“I'll light up the sky tonight about dusk. Hit her in her sweet spots and take off. The weather's suppose to be like it is today.”

“Hit it with your double-barrel rifle?”

“Firing armor-piercing incendiary rounds. You'll see a sight you won't forget.”

“I can watch,” Xavier said, “without leavin my lounge?”

Billy raised his binoculars.

“
Aphrodite
is sitting about twelve miles off, the other side of those islands, the Mouchas, I always thought a good place for pirates to lay in wait. Not anymore. There thirty, forty navy ships in these waters now.”

“I was talkin to Idris,” Xavier said, “after Dara spoke to him. He called to say good-bye. Said he wasn't sure what he would do now. Pirates shot and killed the Syrian captain of a Panama-flagged ship off Mogadishu. Idris thinks it'll bring enough heat to put the pirates out of business before long.”

“He's hanging on by his fingernails,” Billy said, “waiting for somebody to offer him a job.”

“I told him,” Xavier said, “he could always go back to sellin guns to warlords, once he does his R & R in Paris. I'm not gonna worry about Idris.”

“He called Dara this morning?”

“Around nine,” Xavier said.

“You had something you wanted to say to him, so she handed you the phone?”

Xavier turned his head to look at Billy staring at the gas ship through his binoculars. Xavier said, “Dara put the phone on the table and got back in bed.” Xavier paused. “See, then I picked up the phone and talked to him.”

Billy said, “You were staying there?”

“In the same suite?” Xavier said. “No, I had my own.” He let a few moments pass. “But happened to be with her when Idris called. You got it straight now?”

“I had an interesting call,” Billy said, “from the other Gold Dust Twin. Harry said he was wondering could he hitch a ride with us, we happened by any chance to be going up the Red Sea. You understand what he's doing?”

Xavier said, “Jama could be waitin for him at the airport. Harry wants to slip away in your boat.”

“He said he'd get off at Suez. That is, unless I'm going on to Great Britain. That's what he called it. I told him we won't know where we'll be for a few days. I'm assuming,” Billy said, “we'll be delayed. But once we're free to go we'll be heading toward the rising sun.”

“Keep on round the world,” Xavier said. “That takes pluck, man.”

“Well, I've never been accused of lacking it.”

He was quiet for a few minutes.

“Dara learned about the shooting last night from Idris.”

“That's right.”

“Then you talked to him.”

“What you doin,” Xavier said, “is beatin around to find out did I spend the night with Dara. You think I did?”

“It's none of my business,” Billy said. “I'm only trying to get your story straight in my mind.”

Xavier said, “It's best you don't try too hard.”

 

T
HE FIRST THING
D
ARA
said was, “You win,” once she settled down and was herself again. “Boy, did you.”

“But I'm not takin your money, even if it was a bet. I'm not a
paid escort,” Xavier said, up on his elbow so he could look at her next to him, the room light still on, no time being wasted when they came in. “I had some help from my friend Horny Goat Weed. I'm admittin to you it wasn't all me.”

Dara said in her drowsy voice, “You have any left?”

 

T
HEY WERE OUT ON
the sea twenty-seven days alone and had flirted with each other some. They were in the hotel three days and did it with the light on.

Xavier went back to his suite thinking, Man, like he was ten years younger. Or even twenty years to the easy-does-it times.
Girl, what's your hurry? You heatin up on me? Take and put my fire hose on the job
. Breathing all that kind of cute shit in her ear.

He could not hear himself saying these things to Dara.

She'd had a few out clubbing, came back to the hotel to bang on his door and he knew looking at her it was gonna happen. She said, “Let's go to my room, okay?” Like she'd been thinking about it, seeing them doing it in her bed. It was fine with Xavier, feeling Horny Weed stirring in him. She was more girlish than he'd ever seen her, using moves on him, high—course she was high—but feeling good about it and being herself, he could tell.

This was the time and they let it happen, grooving to a big finish, and he thought, Now what? She gonna hide on me? No, she said, “You win.”

After she came out of the bathroom, no longer girlish, she said, “I have to go back to bed, okay?” Putting on a face like she expected him to object. That's all it was, Dara being a tired little girl. Course she could come back to bed.

He wondered how it would work the next time.

You start thinkin about the future now, the first time in your life?

She looked around the bedroom for her nightgown talking about Idris and Harry's experience, Xavier staring at her naked, knowing she wasn't showing herself on purpose, for any reason, she was just letting herself show in a natural way.

That was a good sign.

Don't think about the next time. It would happen when it happened. Xavier, seventy-two years old thinking like a boy.

 

X
AVIER AND
B
ILLY HADN'T
moved from the hotel pool.

“What I was wondering,” Billy said, resting his glasses on his stomach, “if you ever served on an LNG tanker.”

“I tell you I have,” Xavier said, “I know the next question. I served almost a year on a LNG tanker called
Methane Princess
when I was a boy. Drove me crazy waitin to off-load, waitin for escorts, waitin for inspectors lookin for cracks in the tanks full of deadly gas sleepin there. I was a kid, I didn't like crewin on a ship wasn't movin.”

Billy said, “The tanks sleeping, I like that,” and said right away, “You know how a ship like that works?”

“We get to Lake Charles and tie into the lines suck the gas off. That's all I know. You let it leak, the air turns it to vapor. Water makes it a kind of mist you can see. Somethin touches it off and you got the biggest maritime explosion in history.”

“I've been thinking,” Billy said, “of asking you to join my crew.”

“Who's your crew, Helene? You don't need a seaman, you aren't goin no place after.”

“I shoot holes in the five tanks and say
‘Go,'
” Billy said, “I want a seaman at the helm of a Donzi to get us out of there.”

“While they shootin at you, all the surveillin they have around a gas ship?” Xavier said, “A Donzi, huh?”

“One day's work. Tell me what you want.”

“You pay my bail?”

“You're making a movie with no clue I'm gonna blow the fucker out of the water. The networks hear about it, you make a fortune.”

“I could film you,” Xavier said, “tellin why you think you can blow up a two-hundred-fifty-million-dollar gas ship and get away with it.”

“My man,” Billy said, “I've got lawyers up the ying-yang. They'll show I acted with purely heroic intentions, took the only means to prevent a major catastrophe, sunk the ship while it's out of harm's way.”

“You don't care if you kill the crew?”

“I'll give anybody still aboard ten minutes to abandon ship. We have fatalities other than al Qaeda, my lawyers will meet with the next of kin.”

“How 'bout gettin brought up for murder, even if they bad guys?”

“Don't worry about it,” Billy said.

“I won't, you say so,” Xavier said. “I believe what you doin is workin through me to get to Dara, huh?”

Billy said, “You think she'll do it?”

Xavier knew she'd jump at it. He said, “I don't know, I'll talk to Dara, see if she thinks gettin put in irons'd be worth it. I'll find out how much she charges extra for goin to jail, keepin her from workin.”

“Nobody's getting locked up,” Billy said. “You're innocent bystanders making a buck. Tell her that. But I better tell her how I'll pierce the double hull with my high-potency rounds. Get the gas leaking out to pool, the ship's hull losing eighty percent of its tensile strength in five minutes and starts to come apart.”

Xavier said, “Yeah…” like he understood what Billy was saying. It didn't matter, long as he knew the ship was gonna blow.

“We're upwind,” Billy said, “the gas vapor seeping out away from us and the ship. I set it off with another explosive round, light it up and the fire gushes back to the ship.”

Xavier said, “All hell break loose?”

“Like you've never seen in your life. The ship goes up with flames reaching six hundred feet into burning air. Makes the Hindenburg disaster look like a weenie roast. But don't tell Helene that. She cries every time she watches the zeppelin burn up.”

Xavier said, “You seen this happen to a gas ship?”

“My information,” Billy said, “comes from studies of LNG fire hazards, thermal radiation damage, impact scenarios, all by guys with PhDs in chemical engineering, the top names in the liquefied natural gas field.”

“But you haven't,” Xavier said, “actually seen a LNG gas ship set afire.”

“It's never happened at sea. TV will be all over this one, but I'm not looking for credit. I squeeze the trigger, chemistry does the rest.”

“All we do,” Xavier said, “is watch, huh?”

“You're gonna see an explosion with a force of energy,” Billy said, “fifty-five times more powerful than the bomb we dropped on Hiroshima.”

 

B
ILLY GOT READY TO
leave the pool, picked up all his papers and handed the binoculars to Xavier to keep an eye on the gas ship out on the horizon. “You see it move, call me. I'm having a Donzi 26ZF brought to the hotel pier, five hundred horsepower. Ready to go tomorrow.” He said, “I'm gonna get some room service and take a nap.”

Xavier watched him walk off, going to the glass doors to the hotel. He opened one and stepped back and now Xavier saw
Dara appear to stand talking to Billy, Billy doing the talking at first, Dara listening. Now Dara was talking, Xavier would bet setting him straight about something in her nice way. She even reached up to give Billy's cheek a pat. She came over to Xavier taking off the robe. Now he was looking at her in her yellow bikini showing her tan. Xavier remembered her tan lines last night, the light on. Now as she reached him he said, “That's the most clothes I've seen on you lately.”

Dara bent over and kissed Xavier's mouth, Xavier looking at her lollies right there in the tiny bikini top. She stood up adjusting the bra, telling Xavier, “You know what Billy was doing? Hinting around, trying to get me to say we slept together last night. I
know
he thought I'd make up something, so I said, ‘Yeah, we got it on and then went to sleep. What else you want to know?'”

“And you gave his cheek a pat.”

“Did you like that?”

“Loved it,” Xavier said. “Billy wants you on his go-fast boat when he blows up the gas ship. Wants you right there filmin it.”

“Perfect,” Dara said. “We won't have to rent
Buster
again.”