In Cold Blood (8 page)

By the time that she had paid a rogue doctor to examine her, the tumours had spread: dark shadows in her lungs and spots in her liver. Surgery was pointless by that stage and so she had the first of two courses of chemotherapy, both of which she had administered in her dingy room herself. There had been two more courses since, both in the peaceful treatment room off Lévy’s office with the view of the garden and the colourful birds that visited it.

Lévy’s treatment had been more successful.

The doctor was looking at her expectantly. “You said there was something you wanted?”

“Yes. It’s about the morphine. I’m running out. I need the prescription refilled.”

He frowned and scrolled through her records. “Really? You should have enough left for the rest of the month.”

“I don’t.”

“You’ve been taking one a day?”

“Yes,” she lied.

“Then I don’t understand. I prescribed you two months’ worth five weeks ago.”

“There must have been a mistake.” She shrugged. “I’ve run out.”

She looked at him expectantly, aware of how unnerving her crystal blue eyes could be. Lévy looked back, couldn’t hold her gaze, looked down at her records, looked back at her, and then, defeated, printed out a new prescription. “This is two weeks’ worth,” he said. “One a day, no more. The last thing we want is for you to overdose. If you think you need to increase the amount, you’ll need to discuss it with me. Understand?”

“Of course,” she said, taking the script and folding it neatly. She put it in her pocket. “Thank you.”

“Is there anything else?”

“Yes,” she said. “We had an appointment in the diary for next Monday. I’m going to have to postpone it.”

“That’s fine. Just tell Mobina on the way out.” She stood up. “Good luck, Beatrix,” he said.

Beatrix didn’t have much time for luck, but she took his hand when he offered it, smiled, because that was what he expected, and went back outside. She handed the script over at the pharmacy window and pocketed the white bottle that the chemist brought back. She went outside. It was a bright, warm morning and she stopped in the pleasant garden that faced the surgery.

Mohammed was waiting in the car, parked on the road a hundred feet away.

“How was it?”

“It’s not getting any worse.”

“So? How long does he think?”

“Maybe a year.”

“You will have time to do what you want to do, then.”

“That depends on what Joyce tells me or what Pope can find out.”

“Yes. But you will have more time with Isabella. To finish her training.”

“I will,” she said.

The pain in her bones flared again. She cracked open the bottle and tipped two of the little blue pills out onto her palm. She dry swallowed them, put her Oakleys on, and settled back as Mohammed put the car into gear and drove them away.

JOE WOKE to the sound of the town slowly stirring. He could hear the two goats in the yard complaining, the sound of children playing in the streets nearby, and cockerels welcoming the new day. He had slept badly. The mattress was uncomfortable and even when he had been able to sleep, he had been plagued by nightmares. He knew that Joyce was right. This wasn’t a commercial deal. It was political. He had heard about the things that the Islamists did to their prisoners, the things that they did in order to get YouTube clicks and prominence on news reports.

He sat up. Most of the crew were either asleep or lying on a mattress, no doubt having the same thoughts that he was. He got up and walked across to a spot where he could look up through the ventilation bricks. He could see a thin ribbon of blue sky, no clouds. As he watched, he saw the vapour trail of a commercial jet leave a white trace across his horribly limited view. He thought of the passengers on the plane, passing overhead, with no idea of what was happening to them a few thousand feet below.

“Morning.”

It was Joyce. He was sitting with his back to a dry patch of wall, his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles.

“Morning.”

“Did you sleep?”

“Not really. You?”

“Yes,” he said. “I can sleep in most places.”

“Even a place like this?”

“I’ve been in worse.”

“You seem pretty calm about everything.”

“What’s the point in wasting energy when there’s nothing you can do? I’d rather save it.”

“For what?”

“There’ll be a moment when they let their guard down. These boys are not professional. They don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t have a plan and they don’t have a routine. There will be a chance. And then I’ll get us out.”

“So what were you before all this? Military, obviously, but…”

“Special forces. SAS.”

“And then private security?”

“I did something else in between jobs.”

“You’re not going to tell me what that was, though.”

“That’s right. “

“Classified?”

“Something like that.”

“Your men the same as you?”

“Soldiers. Good ones. The kind of men you’d want in a situation like this. They won’t be flustered and they won’t panic. They’re just like me. They’ll wait for a chance. And then they’ll take it.” He sat up a little straighter. “Your crew, captain. Are they alright?”

“Do you mean are they handling this? As well as can be expected.”

“I mean do I have to worry about any of them giving us up?”

Joe shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t speak for them.”

“You’re the captain, though.”

“I don’t think that counts for much any more. We’re not at sea.”

“No, but you’re still their C.O.” He leaned in closer and whispered with taut urgency, “And you need to make them listen to you. If the four of us are compromised in any way, your position gets worse, not better. You can’t do deals with these people. They don’t bargain. It’s all about ideology. If we’re here, we can get us out. If not, I’d say your odds just got exponentially worse. You understand what I’m saying, captain?”

“I’m not going to say anything,” Joe said. “And these are good men, Joyce. I doubt they will, either.”

Joe found he really didn’t like Joyce. He had an air of easy arrogance about him that was difficult to stomach. He was happy to let him know that he was a dangerous man, but he wouldn’t say why or how. It was all for effect. Joe didn’t like his attitude and he worried that the haughtiness might rub up against their captors the wrong way. He noted to himself that he would have to be ready to ameliorate the friction, because he guessed that it was coming.

They heard the sound of footsteps descending the stone stairs and then the door unlocking. It opened and Farax and another two men, both of whom were armed, came inside. Farax was holding a large pot which smelt appetising.

“Breakfast,” he said, putting the pot down on the floor. “
Behr
. Goat liver. You like this?”

There was also some flat bread, nicely baked and not fried, and some tea. Somali
sheh
was ridiculously sweet, not much more than a sugar solution coloured with brown dye. There were no plates and so the men tore off pieces of bread and scooped out the liver and onions. It was delicious and eating it reminded him how hungry he was. They hadn’t eaten for over a day. He went back for a second helping.

Farax watched them with a preoccupied expression on his face.

When they were done, he came across to where Joe was sitting and crouched down beside him.

“Now, Joe,” he said. “We will talk about what I said on the boat yesterday. There was a man with a long rifle on the boat. He shot my friend. Shot him in head. Killed him. You must tell me who this man is.”

Joyce was still next to him. Joe dared not take his eyes from Farax’s face for fear of incriminating him.

“We had no long rifles,” he said. “I told you already. No rifles.”

“You are sure?”

“I am.”

“Okay, Joe.”

He stood up and nodded to the two men behind him. One of them stood back and levelled his AK and the other stepped forward and grabbed one of the crew by the shoulder and hauled him to his knees. “Up,” he ordered, tugging again until the man got up.

Joe recognised the man. He was middled-aged, one of the chefs in the kitchen. He struggled until the AK was turned to face him, the gunman shouting angrily, “I shoot! I shoot!”

“What are you doing?” Joe said.

“Yesterday, an American drone fired a missile at a village in Pakistan. Many dead. Innocent people, dead. The American government must understand that comes at price. Nothing is free, Joe, you understand? Consequences for everything.”

The chef was hauled to his feet and dragged to the door. Joe looked into Farax’s eyes and saw implacable purpose.

It was the most frightening thing he had ever seen.

“We talk later, Joe, yes? We talk about the man with the long gun.”

He left the room and the door was shut and locked again.

“What are they doing?” Harry Torres said.

“They’re moving faster than I thought they would,” Joyce said.

“What the fuck does that mean?”

Joyce pressed himself upright and walked across to the other side of the room where the ventilation bricks offered a restricted view into the yard.

Joe followed him. “What
does
that mean?”

“Look,” he said.

Joe did. It wasn’t easy to make everything out because the view was up high but, as he stood on tiptoe, he could see a large group of fighters, recognisable from the long skirts or
ma’awiis
that they were wearing, and then the pasty white legs of the chef as he was dragged between two men to a spot in the middle of the group. He heard Farax’s voice, speaking in English, the message difficult to hear at a distance, but the anger and indignation readily apparent.

Farax finished speaking, there was a pause, and then a shrill, blood-curdling cry.

Joyce turned away. “We need to get out of here,” he said.

THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT had sent Michael Pope to Marrakech aboard one of the Gulfstream G650s that MI6 leased to get its agents around the world without worrying about commercial flights. The sleek jet was parked just off the taxi-way and they were transported to it aboard a courtesy car. The whole process of passing through the airport had been easy. They had proceeded through the terminal building without needing to stop, with just a cursory check of their credentials as they went airside. The rucksack that contained Beatrix’s equipment was treated as a diplomatic bag. She had dropped it onto a trolley and pushed it through the terminal without it being scanned or otherwise disturbed. The treatment was familiar to her from her old career.

She had stopped at duty free and bought a bottle of water for the flight and then, seeing a shop that specialised in Islamic dress, she had purchased a niqāb and a jilbāb. The veil and cloak might prove to be useful, she thought, as she stuffed them into her bag.

The car drew to a stop and Beatrix stepped outside into the heat of another fine day. She drew in a deep breath and exhaled, wondering whether she would see the city again, those spectacular mountains, the clamour and bustle of the medina. And then she thought of her daughter and the reluctance to leave became much more difficult to resist.

She paused at the steps that led up to the open door of the jet.

“All okay?” Pope called down.

“Yes,” she said, shrugging the concerns aside. “All fine.”

She climbed the steps and entered the jet. There were half a dozen reclining leather seats, two tables and a large flatscreen television fitted to the partition that separated the cockpit from the cabin. Beatrix sat down and strapped herself in, watching pensively as the pilot guided them out onto the runway and fired the twin engines. The jet launched down the runway and into the air, cutting to port and climbing steadily. Beatrix watched through the porthole as the Red City dwindled into miniature. She tried to look for the riad but, of course, it was impossible. The crazy scramble of streets quickly looked identical and even when she had oriented herself with the broad expanse of Jemma el-Fnaa and the minaret of the Koutoubia mosque, it was still impossible to tell one street from the next.

The pilot turned to the east and the view was replaced by the sandy dunes of the Sahara, occasional oases fringed with lush palms, mud-brick Berber villages and centuries old kasbahs and, above all of them, the impassive reach of the Atlas mountains.

“I’ve got something for you,” Pope said.

He fired up the flatscreen with a remote and, using an iPad that was patched through to it, put up a colour photograph of coastal topography. She saw a small town next to a thin white ribbon of sand and then a series of graduating blues as the sea deepened the farther to the east that she looked.

“Somalia?” she asked.

He nodded. “This is Barawe. The Americans flew a Global Hawk over it at sixty thousand feet yesterday.”

She looked at the screen with renewed interest. Pope flicked through a dozen different pictures. The Hawk was equipped with synthetic aperture radar and electro-optical/infrared sensors. That equipment, when combined with the long loiter times that it could stay undetected over an area of interest, meant it could provide superb intelligence.

“It’s one hundred and thirty-five miles from Mogadishu. Al Shabaab took it over after they were forced out of there. The nearest town where government and African Union forces have control is Shalanbood, sixty-eight miles away. To the northeast is the Ambarese training camp for al-Shabaab’s foreign fighters. The local military dispatched a unit of officers and support elements to the town in 2012, but they ran into concerted opposition and had to fall back. To all intents and purposes, the terrorists run this town. And that makes it one of the most dangerous places on the planet.”

Pope indicated an area close to the beach.

“This house—south of the mosque, here—is where the Americans think the pirates are holding the crew. It’s a three storey beachside property, two hundred metres from the sea on the town’s east side. They believe that it is used by
mujahideen
who have gone to Somalia to take up al-Shabaab’s cause. They suspect that a Kenyan of Somalia origin called Abdulkadir Farax Abdulkadir is in control. He’s behind plenty of the activity that’s been coming out of Somalia. They think the team responsible for the shopping mall in Kenya came from here. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the SEALs have orders to take him out at the same time they get the hostages out.”