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Authors: Elmore Leonard

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BOOK: Djibouti
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She said, “Remember in Eyl I told you what I wanted to do? Get Idris to let us visit a ship he's holding for ransom. Get back to work. Talk only to members of the crew, no pirates.”

“I believe I asked why would he let you? You said 'cause CNN's put him in a good mood and you know how to talk to him.”

“I told Idris the afternoon we visited,” Dara said, “the world must wonder how you treat your hostages. I'll ask the ship's crew and they'll say the Somali pirates are decent,” Dara said, “a couple of Saudis among fifteen Filipinos. And the first officer was Saudi. I mentioned it to Idris and Harry and Idris asked me how I knew about the crew. No, first he asked why I picked the
Aphrodite
with all the ships anchored out there. I said I was curious about it, an LNG tanker. I told him I looked at the crew list to get the names and nationalities and saw two Arabs among all the Filipinos.

“Harry asked if I happened to know what the vessel was carrying. I said, ‘I just told you, liquefied natural gas.' Harry said, ‘Isn't that highly combustible?'”

“Playin dumb,” Xavier said.

“Then Idris told him don't worry, the ship will be gone in a day or two.”

“I remember we went aboard,” Xavier said, “we're told we could speak to the crew all we wanted, as long as we know Tagalog. Idris havin fun with us. Idris said it wasn't his ship, but he'd come along and watch over us. Said he'd tell the pirates aboard to duck if they saw me aimin the camera at them. Meanwhile you shootin away with your tiny spy pen while Idris is watchin me with the Sony.”

Dara brought the video spy camera out of her jacket and clipped it in the breast pocket, the top inch of the pen, its pinhole lens showing. “A pen if you didn't know better.”

Xavier said, “I thought it
was
a pen.”

“It is. Anyone who stares at it,” Dara said, “I slip it out of the pocket, stop shooting and start taking notes.”

“Whyn't you use it at Idris's house?”

“Too dark in there. This one does need a lot of light. Push the button on top and I'm the camera. I did manage to get the two Saudis while they're ducking away from you.” She said, “If there's some kind of plot…You know what I mean, to use a highly combustible ship? I don't think Idris would be in on it.”

“But you act like you suspect somethin's goin on. Way you start lookin over your shoulder.”

“It was later,” Dara said. “After I found out Billy's watching the gas ship and knows more about it than we do.”

B
ILLY WAS DRIVING
H
ELENE
nuts. He'd say, “You don't mind living on the boat?” Helene would tell him she loved
Pegaso,
loved sailing.

Billy said, “I'm glad you go for champagne.”

“Love it.” Stay half in the bag it was easier to take the boring mind games he played.

“Champagne or coffee,” Billy said, “why stock beverages we don't need.”

He was starting to sound weird. He said to her while they were moored off Eyl, seeing only a few lights ashore but hearing the generator from up on the slope, “You don't feel cooped up?”

She wanted to hit him with something. The fire extinguisher.

“All I said was why don't we go ashore and take a walk?”

“No, you said why don't we go ashore and stretch our legs. Like they're cramped from being stuck aboard a couple of weeks.”

Helene took a moment before saying, “Whether I said let's
go for a walk or let's stretch our legs, I swear they both mean the same thing to me. I'm happy to be here, but I'd also like to fucking go for a walk. Okay?”

Billy liked it when she talked like that. He grinned saying, “I was teasing you. See if you'd hold your ground or start crying. Say it again.”

“What?” Helene said.

“You'd like to fucking go for a walk. Most girls use the word, it doesn't sound right. You give it meaning. Let's hear you use it in a sentence.”

The guy was unreal.

“You want me to say
fuck
or
fucking
?”

“Either one.”

Helene said, “You want to take a walk or fuck?”

“Lemme think,” Billy said, grinning at her.

 

“T
WO HUNDRED YEARS AGO
,” Billy said, “the last time a U.S. ship was attacked by African pirates, a young naval officer by the name of Bainbridge skippered a ship that took part in the action. Today the USS
Bainbridge,
named for that young officer, in naval combat off the coast of Tripoli, is again confronting African pirates. You realize that?”

“You sound like the guy on CNN.”

They were in the
Pegaso
's salon watching the coverage on television.

“This time the wogs picked on an American ship with an American captain and crew, the
Maersk Alabama
. Maersk is the owner, he's Danish, but everybody aboard is a Yank. It's a seventeen-thousand-ton container ship. This time the wogs bit off more'n they can chew.”

“But they have the captain.”

“The hero of this action. Giving himself up so the wogs won't fuck with his men. Leave 'em alone. Captain Richie Phillips, they put him in that motorized lifeboat and thought they could sail off with him and ran out of gas.”

“And the guy who should've kept the gas tank full,” Helene said, “is thinking he's fucked, he's gonna get fired or go to prison for not doing his job. I wonder if anybody's thought of him.”

 

“H
ON, THIS HAS NOTHING
to do with some oiler's misfortune. This is about the captain of the
Alabama,
now a hostage of the wogs. Four kids with automatic rifles have put Captain Richie Phillips in the most potentially heroic position of his life.”

“If he wants to be a hero.”

“One that could win him the Congressional Medal of Honor. Or whatever they award if you're not military. That's the chance, what puts him in the right place. Get him pictured on the cover of
Time
or
Newsweek
.”

“Or both. Sometimes they do the same stories.”

“This one about an American looking his fate in the eye. The wogs want two million for him.” Billy paused. “They aren't Kafirs, Kafirs are Hindus, and they aren't gooks. Wogs are in a huge area from the Middle to the Far East. I'm thinking there must be a special name for these guys.”

“Towelheads.”

“That's crude. I'll stick with wogs, or Mohammedans. Four of them are holding the captain for ransom. They don't get two million for him he's a dead man.”

“They said that?”

“Not in those words. This is a standoff between armed wogs who want money and the government of the United States represented by Captain Phillips. If we give in to their demand and pay
the ransom, we're pussy. We're turning our back to what's most precious to us, the ideals of a free people.”

She thought he was going to say “our precious bodily fluids.”

Helene, on the settee, put her glass down and looked at Billy. He was serious. He was the guy Sterling Hayden played in
Dr. Strangelove,
General Jack D. Ripper.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,
the subtitle. Sterling Hayden was so serious he was weird. Calm, talking about the Communist conspiracy to put fluoridation in our drinking water to fuck up our precious bodily fluids. They watched the picture twice while they were still in the Mediterranean. Billy said he'd watched it six or seven times at least and thought Jack D. Ripper was a martyr, giving his life for the sake of our precious bodily fluids. That's who Billy sounded like at times, Sterling Hayden.

Billy said, “I'd be willing to bet Richie Phillips somehow got on the horn with the commander of the
Bainbridge
and told him, ‘Don't pay them. Not one dime. Threaten to send a missile up their ass if they don't surrender. Tell them how it works, you get caught you stand trial. Give 'em one minute to make up their minds, with a ticking clock next to the phone the wogs can hear. I bet anything the commander gave them a time limit. The wogs tell him, ‘But we have Captain Phillips, he will be killed too.' The commander tells them, ‘Richie Phillips is willing to give his life for his country and what he believes. Are you?'”

Helene listened to the CNN report and said, “Well, it isn't gonna happen tonight.”

She needed to get straight in her mind which guy was the real Billy Wynn. Serious enough when he was sailing the boat, but weird when they anchored and he sounded like Sterling Hayden. She wondered what he'd be like at home, if he wore a cowboy hat. Sooner or later she'd have to meet his friends down in East Texas. Have people over for a cookout and square dance in their cowboy boots. She thought, No. Wait a minute. Billy
didn't listen to country, he liked—what was the guy's name he played almost every day? His friends would come to the cook-outs in raggedy straw hats and move their shoulders in time to Jimmy Buffett's “Margaritaville.” Jesus.

 

W
HAT
B
ILLY DID MOST
of the day, anchored off Eyl, was listen to CNN and study the ships held for ransom, creeping over every inch of them with his huge binoculars. He'd get the names of the ships and look up their registry and then make a few satellite calls to his informants in Djibouti and Qatar, Billy lounging in the
Pegaso
's salon.

Helene heard him say, “Well, it's the
Aphrodite
now, a thousand-foot LNG tanker. I can see five tanks sticking out of the deck.” Billy said, “What I want to know is where it's going,” and hung up.

He said to Helene, “They changed the name of the ship from
Heureka
to
Aphrodite
.”

“Yeah…? They sound like cool guys.”

“Originally it was out of Piraeus with a Greek master and crew. The owner now is from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates but lives in London. I said to my informant, ‘You sure the owner isn't living in a cave up in Pakistan?' If they don't find that fucker soon I'm gonna get on it. We're offering twenty-five mil to learn his whereabouts and nobody's stepped up. You know why? We're offering too much. What's a former goat herdsman who delivers milk to him gonna do with twenty-five million bucks? Buy a car?”

Helene said, “Are you talking about whoever fingers Ben Laden?”

“Hon, it's bin, Osama
bin
Laden with a small
b
. No matter who my informant tells me owns the ship, I think it could belong
to bin Laden. I wonder if anybody calls him that? ‘Hey, bin, how you been?' It was on the History Channel all the ships he owns. You ever watch it?”

“I love the History Channel.”

“You never saw it in your life.”

“I've heard of it.”

“Their shows are great. The world's worst natural disasters, Krakatoa, tsunamis, the Johnstown flood, the attempt to assassinate Hitler. They show him for what he really was, a homasexual dictator.”

“Hitler was gay?”

“You ever see him at play up at his mountain retreat? Acting like a girl, slapping Eva Braun on the ass? I'm of the opinion Eva was a tough broad. She loved Adolf and wanted to straighten him out. You understand Eva was his cover.”

“I don't think it's possible to turn,” Helene said, “or they don't want to. Guys you can tell are gay—ones I'd meet—are always having fun, and they're smart. I don't know about the ones you can't tell if they are or not.”

Billy said, “We finally got a lead on something that's bigger than these Mohammedans playing they're pirates. We'll keep tabs on the
Aphrodite
when she's released, not let her get too far away. I think she'll have to put in at Djibouti to take on stores.”

Billy popped open a bottle of champagne.

“I told you I saw Dara and her bearer going out to the ship with Idris. How would she know, without my kind of sources? You know how many paid insiders I have on this now? Six. How could she know
Aphrodite
's gonna blow up a U.S. port?”

“How do
you
know?”

“Hon, al Qaeda's got a huge hard-on for the U.S. It's been eight years since 9/11, al Qaeda's thinking up its next move against us. It's got to be a good one, something different but showy. Dara might not suspect what's going down, but some
thing's on her mind. I bet her a bottle of champagne I'd have her luggage in her room inside of five minutes. I intended to come with the bottle, a cool way to meet her. Miss Smarty's already got the flutes out. The girl's aware, has a keen sense of things.”

He sounded just like Sterling Hayden.

“Are you gonna tell her what you think?” Helene said.

“I've only thought of one scenario. I may need a couple more people on this. There's an ex-SEAL I hire. I tell Buck what I want to find out and he delivers. Won't take any pay till he does the job, then holds me up. The man has style. Buck Bethards. He could be anywhere, but I'll give him a call. Buck'll drop whatever he's doing to work for me.”

Billy was pouring champagne now, telling Helene, “When you're not too busy, google the ports in the U.S. that allow delivery of liquid natural gas. I'll bet there's no more'n a half dozen, all of them inland a ways.” He raised his flute to touch Helene's.

“I notice you and Dara seemed to hit it off. Why don't you talk to her girl to girl, see if you can find out what she's up to.” Billy said, “Hon, I'd appreciate it.”

 

T
HEY WERE TOPSIDE NOW,
early evening, the sun sliding around before falling like a stone behind the hijacked ships. Or it was the fucking wine. Helene said, “You're still looking at them?”

Through his huge binoculars. “I'm trying to locate the three Saudis, one of 'em's first officer.”

“What's the captain?”

“Egyptian. His name's Wassef.”

“I got what you want. The
Times
did a story about dreading the day an LNG tanker is used by terrorists. You're not the only one smells a plot. There are five ports in the U.S. for this kind
of tanker, all inland. Everett, Mass., near Boston. Cove Point, Maryland. Elba Island, Georgia, and Lake Charles, Louisiana.”

“That's four. Where's the fifth one?”

“A hundred and sixteen miles out in the Gulf of Mexico, the Gateway Energy Bridge.”

Billy said, “Want to walk on the beach?”

Helene stared at him, the glasses against his face.

“Stretch our legs?”

“Slip the raft over the side, lock the hatch and turn on the Mean Dog tape.”

“Idris asked us to stop by. He's throwing a party.”

“For his Mohammedan buddies?”

“For Harry, he's still here.”

Billy lowered the glasses. “I wouldn't mind talking to Harry. See if I can find out what side he's on.”

BOOK: Djibouti
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