Hostage Three (19 page)

It must have been about ten days after we got to the Somali coast.

— What the hell? said Dad.

He and the stepmother were playing – and I realise the irony of this – Battleships on the rear deck, under the sun canopy. That my father was spending all this time playing games was surprising. Still, I suppose there was competition involved, and Dad gets competition; he understands it. Games aren't jokes: they go somewhere; they involve action; someone wins.

It was another brutally hot day, the heat haze so thick over the scrubby hills of the coast that it was like the rock and sand were on fire.

The man in the suit approached us. He was clean-shaven, about forty, with a thin, wiry frame, and he was carrying an equally thin, black briefcase. Ahmed was beside him, smiling.

— Nyesh, said the man, holding out a hand. I am the lawyer.

— The . . . lawyer? For us?

— No! He laughed. For these men. For Ahmed.

— I don't understand, said Dad.

Ahmed sighed, beckoned over Farouz, who came over, scowling. I hadn't spoken to him since two days before, when he'd basically told me by omission that he'd put a bullet in my head if Ahmed told him to. He talked rapidly to Nyesh for a minute or so.

— This is how it works, said Farouz. I come on board at the start, as a translator. Now the lawyer has come so that we can negotiate.

— You will find me very reasonable, the man in the suit said, with a wolfish smile. His accent was almost as good as Farouz's. I understand the owners of the yacht know that you have been taken captive? A video was taken and emailed to them, yes?

Dad nodded.

— And the navy, too?

This time Farouz inclined his head.

— Yes. A helicopter came. And they called the yacht once.

— OK, good, good, said Nyesh. But you have refused all attempts at contact since then? Good. Right. I think, then, we'd better make some phone calls of our own.

 

We sat in the dining room, at the big table. Tony, who could walk around on his own now, came, too. He was the voice of the company, at least as far as the pirates were concerned. He introduced himself to Nyesh as our guide.

— Fine, said Nyesh. In that case you will speak. It is better if I do not talk to them directly. It makes things . . .

— Tense, supplied Farouz.

— Yes, tense.

— Tell me what you want, and I will tell them. Tony held the satellite phone in his hand.

Nyesh nodded.

— We want five million dollars.

Dad spluttered on the water he was drinking, spraying the table. Tony just raised an eyebrow.

— That's a lot of money, he said.

— We have an investor, said the lawyer apologetically. We must pay a dividend.

The sponsor, I thought. Amir. It was strange that I knew these things, but couldn't mention them to anyone else, because I knew them from Farouz.

This was Dad's territory, and now he turned on Nyesh.

— Are you fucking serious? he asked. This isn't some FTSE 100 company you're running here. We're being held by illiterates who bring goats on to our yacht! You're all fucking pirates!

Nyesh didn't blink. He just lifted up his briefcase, slid it on to the table and flicked the metal tabs to open it. He took out a sheaf of papers.

— I am the accountant as well as the lawyer, he said. These are the accounts of the South Central Coast Guard.

I saw columns of numbers on the papers, his finger tracing them.

— We take this very seriously, Mr Fields. Yes, there are illiterates in the operation, but there is no other industry in Puntland. Much as I would love to move to London and exercise my profession there, I cannot. And so I, too, and others like me, become pirates. Do you see?

— This is absurd, said Dad.

— Please, said Tony. Let's all calm down. He indicated Dad with his hand, then turned to Nyesh. Can I have a moment with my colleague? he asked.

Nyesh shrugged.

Tony drew Dad aside and they had a whispered conversation. We all just sat there waiting for them. Then they returned to the table.

— We can call our employers, Tony said. Five million dollars does sound a little expensive, though. The last private yacht that was taken, they paid 3.5 –

Nyesh shrugged.

— Inflation, he said. Make the phone call.

So, while Dad glared at everyone, Tony dialled a number. Immediately the bank – or whoever it was – answered.

— Yes, yes, we're all safe, said Tony, in response to a question from the other end. I was wounded in the leg, yes, but I'm better now. Uh-huh. Yes, I'm in the yacht in the dining room with three of the pirates. The others are mostly on guard outside, two on –

Smart, I thought. But at exactly the same time as I thought it, Ahmed raised a hand and Farouz lifted his pistol, pointed it at Tony's head.

— Ah, sorry, said Tony. I mean, the pirates have their demands. That is, I am to put their demands to you. Oh, OK. Hang on. He turned to Nyesh. Do you have a pen? Paper? Nyesh handed them over and Tony wrote down a number, then he hung up the phone. There is a negotiator aboard a Royal Navy vessel that is heading towards our coordinates, he said. We are to call him.

— Fine, said Nyesh.

Tony dialled the new number. The guy must have been expecting the call because there was no greeting.

— Yes, said Tony, we have their demands. Yes, that's right. Yes. Five million dollars. No. Five million. Right, OK. He turned to Nyesh. They want two days.

Nyesh shook his head.

— They have twenty-four hours.

Later that day
, they made us come out on to the deck.

I was watching a film in my room, I don't know where everyone else was. Mohammed came to get me. When he entered the room he gave me a kind of sickly smile, then he pointed his gun at me.

— Out, he said. On deck. There will be a die.

I stared at him. Everything below my pelvis disappeared, and my stomach fell through space.

— I'm sorry?

— A die. On deck.

— A death?

— Yes. Now.

Oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus
,
I thought. I remembered him mock-slitting his throat, telling me we would die like animals. I tried to push past him, to rush, but he gripped my arm. It was like being held by a bear. I stood very still, the skin of my arm smarting.

— Where is watch? he asked. You have? He was too close and his breath was sour against my face.

— Watch? I don't know what –

He raised his other hand, as if he were going to hit me, then he scowled and lowered it again. Mohammed might be the son of someone important, I realised, but Ahmed was still chief. He could get fined for striking me.

But what if a fine wasn't enough to –

He dug his fingers even further into my arm and took a deep breath. Then he leaned in close, and as he did so, his hand, the one he had been about to hit me with, brushed against my chest, sending a shiver of horror across my skin.

An awful, awful thought occurred to me then, appalling as eyes outside your window in the dead of night. I'd only worried about him hitting me.

What if he . . .

I mean, we were alone. He was a strong man. I was a girl. There would be nothing I could do, nothing to stop him. He had a gun! I felt like a mouse in a trap, like I could spin around and run in circles, but wouldn't go anywhere. I felt like energy was blazing inside me, even though I stood very still. It was like I was a furnace, bolted to the floor and roaring inside with flame.

I thought, I have to do something. Mohammed leered at me and I saw the khat in his mouth. On an instinct, I pointed to it.

— Can I taste some? I said. Some khat?

Mohammed looked mystified.

— Taste?

— Try.

— Try?

I took a breath. I mimed chewing, pointed to his mouth again, then to me, to show what I wanted.

He gave a surprised laugh, then reached into his pocket. He took out a cloth bag, from which he drew a little handful of leaves. He gave them to me.

— There, he said. Try.

I packed the leaves into my mouth and started chewing.

Oh, fuck.

It was awful – it tasted bitter, and kind of hurt my cheeks and tongue. It was astringent, too, pulling my mouth inwards, as if my cheeks and tongue wanted to fold themselves around it, bury it, stop me tasting it. But I smiled at him.

— Hmm, I said. Good.

Mohammed shook his head in disbelief, but the moment of terrible tension between us was gone.

— Come, he said. Outside.

Then he dragged me out of the room.

Out on deck, in the light, the pirates were gathered, all apart from Nyesh. He had returned to the beach on the same boat he arrived on, like some kind of commuter, in his suit, going to and from work.

Standing there, held fast by Ahmed and another pirate, was one of the goats. Ahmed had a knife in his hand. Mohammed turned to me and grinned, then winked.

— They're going to kill it, said the stepmother.

The goat, I thought. The goddamn goat. It's only the goddamn goat. I suppose we had run out of tinned food, so it was time to move on to the living supplies.

As the men prepared, I surreptitiously spat out the khat.

They did it on the diving platform – so that they could hose the blood down into the sea, I realised afterwards. Two of the men held the beast upside down by the rear legs. The muscles in their arms stood out, trembling.

Ahmed had a big knife. It looked shiny and new, so I figured it must be from the galley. I thought he was going to be the one to kill the creature, but then he walked over to Farouz and handed him the knife. Farouz nodded. He went up to the goat, which was strangely still, hanging there. He knelt by it and whispered something.

I watched him carefully. This was Farouz, who'd been gentle, who'd told me stories, and he was kneeling by the goat with a big knife in his hand. Then he put the blade to its throat and made a very deliberate, very precise sawing motion. I saw the muscles tense in his arm, the veins visible.

Blood gushed.

The stepmother screamed, but the goat didn't. It twisted, eyes bulging, mouth opening and closing. Every time I thought there must be no more blood inside it, the red stream kept coming, pooling on the deck at Ahmed's feet, running in the cracks between the wood, like the blood of the pirate who got shot, making a hard wet sound as it continued to drip from the goat's throat.

So much blood. I could smell it, too – an iron smell, one of those smells that seems so familiar, the smell of large amounts of blood, even though you have never come across it before. As if all those wars and battles and slaughtered animals, through all of human history, have embedded in us a memory that we're not even aware of. As if I, you, all people, know the smell of death, the same way we know to close our eyes when something flies towards our faces.

Farouz killed the goat, I thought. Ahmed asked him to, and he did.

Would he kill me the same way? Would he just saw through my throat, the muscles in his arms, his tendons, his bones, working together to end my life?

Eventually, the goat stopped moving. I didn't feel sick, exactly, but I felt dizzy, like the yacht was rocking more than normal. This was partly the lingering effect of the khat, I think. I was feeling a kind of unpleasant buzz, like when you drink too much coffee.

The sun was a white-hot ball in the sky above, pale and blazing. It must have been two hundred degrees. As always, the sun was in one spot in the sky, but the light seemed to be coming from everywhere, levelling the world, making it shadowless and without depth. Everything – the dinghy and the lifeboat, the scuba equipment, the goat that Ahmed was beginning to carve up, even as he waved us back inside – looked flat, drained, colourless.

— You OK, Amy-bear? said Dad, taking me by the arm. Come on, let's get you inside.

I staggered into the shade with him. In the corridor, things popped back into existence – the paintings on the wall, the fire extinguisher – and the world was three-dimensional again.

— I'm not eating that, said the stepmother.

— Want to bet? said Dad.

I couldn't finish my film
. Hours later, they called us out on to the deck again. All the blood had been cleaned up, so you wouldn't know a goat had died there. Except . . . I took a breath. The goat's head was lying on its side, staring up at the evening stars, its throat cut raggedly from its body, the white shaft of the spine sticking out.

The pirates laughed when they saw me staring at it. They had this gas-fired stove, with an enormous, scratched metal pot on it. One of the men – Yusuf, I think his name was – was stirring the stuff in the pot with a big spoon.