Frederick Forsyth - The Kill List

“Ah, Mr. Reynolds, we speak again. This is Mr. Ali Abdi on the bridge of the Malmö , with Captain Eklund beside me.”

In London, Julian Reynolds looked pleased. He covered the mouthpiece and said, “It’s Abdi again.” There was a sigh of relief, and that included Gareth Evans. Everyone at the London end had heard of the foul reputation of al-Afrit, the cruel old tyrant who ruled Garacad. The appointment of the urbane Abdi caused a flicker of light in the gloom.

“Good morning, Mr. Abdi. Salaam aleikhem .”

“Aleikhem as-salaam,” responded Abdi over the airwaves. He suspected the Swedes and British would happily wring his neck if they had a free choice, but the Muslim greeting was a nice attempt at civility. He appreciated civility.

“I am going to pass you to someone I think you already know,” said Reynolds. He passed the receiver to Gareth Evans and switched to conference call. The voice from the Somali shore was clear as a bell. It was just as clear to the ears at Fort Meade and Cheltenham, who were recording everything.

“Hello, Mr. Abdi. This is Mr. Gareth. We meet again, if only in space. I have been asked to handle the London end of things.”

In London, five men — the shipowner, two lawyers, an insurer and Gareth Evans — heard Abdi’s chortle over the speaker system.

“Mr. Gareth, my friend. I am so glad it is you. I am sure we can lead this matter to a good conclusion.”

Abdi’s habit of putting the “Mr.” in front of the given name was his way of landing between frostily formal and too intimate. He always referred to Gareth Evans as Mr. Gareth.

“I have a room set aside for me in the law office here in London,” said Evans. “Shall I move in there so that we can start?”

It was too fast for Abdi. The formalities had to be observed. One was to impress on the Europeans that the hurry was all on their side. He knew Stockholm would already have calculated just how much the Malmö was now costing them on a daily basis; ditto the insurers, of which there would be three.

One firm would cover the hull and machinery, a different firm the cargo, and a third would be the war risk underwriters holding cover on the crew. They would all have different calculations of loss, ongoing or pending. Let them stew with their figures a while longer, he thought. What he said was: “Ah, Mr. Gareth, my friend, you are ahead of me. I need a little more time to study the Malmö and her cargo before I can propose a reasonable figure that you can confidently put to your principals for settlement.”

He had already been online from his private room, set aside for him in the sand-blasted fortress in the hills behind Garacad, which was the headquarters of al-Afrit. He knew there were factors such as age and condition of the freighter, perishability of the cargo and loss of future likely earnings to be computed.

But he had done all that and had decided on a starting figure of twenty-five million dollars. He knew he would probably settle on four million, maybe five if the Swede was in a hurry.

“Mr. Gareth, let me propose we begin tomorrow morning. Say, nine o’clock London time? That will be midday here. I shall by then be back in my office onshore.”

“Very well, my friend. I shall be here to take your call.”

It would be a satellite call by computer. There would be no question of using Skype. Facial expressions can give too much away.

“There is one last thing before we break for the day. Do I have your assurance that the crew, including the Filipinos, will be detained safely onboard and not molested in any way?”

No other Somali heard this, for those on the Malmö were out of earshot of the bridge and could not speak English anyway. But Abdi caught the meaning.

By and large, the Somali warlords and clan chiefs treated their captives humanely, but there were one or two notable exceptions. Al-Afrit was one, and the worst, a vicious old brute with a reputation.

At a personal level, Abdi would work for al-Afrit, and his fee would be twenty percent. His labors as hostage negotiator for pirates were making him a wealthy man much younger than usual. But he did not have to like his principal and he did not. He despised him. But he did not have a corps of bodyguards around him.

“I am confident that all the crew will remain onboard and be well treated,” he intoned, then ended the call. He just prayed he was right.

The amber eyes gazed at the young prisoner for a dozen seconds. Silence reigned in the room. Opal could sense the educated Somali, who had let him into the courtyard, and two Pakistani bodyguards behind him. When the voice came, it was surprisingly gentle and in Arabic.

“What is your name?”

Opal gave it.

“Is that a Somali name?”

Behind him, the Somali shook his head. The Pakistanis did not understand.

“No, Sheikh, I am from Ethiopia.”

“That is a mainly nasrani country. Are you a Christian?”

“Thanks be to Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate. No, no, Sheikh, I am not. I am from the Ogaden, just over the border. We are all Muslims and much persecuted for it.”

The face with the amber eyes nodded approvingly.

“And why did you come to Somalia?”

“There were rumors in my village that recruiters from the Ethiopian army were coming to press-gang our people into the army to fight in the invasion of Somalia. I escaped and came here to join my fellow brothers in Allah.”

“You came from Kismayo to Marka last night? Why?”

“I am looking for work, Sheikh. I have a job as tally clerk at the fish dock, but I hoped for something better in Marka.”

“And how did you come by these papers?”

Opal told his rehearsed story. He had been motoring through the night to avoid the blinding heat and sandstorms of the day. He noted his petrol was low and stopped to fill up from his spare jerrycan. This was, by chance, on a concrete bridge over a dry wadi.

He heard a faint cry. He thought it might be the wind in the high trees that stand near there, but then he heard it again. It seemed to come from below the bridge.

He climbed down the bank into the wadi and found a pickup truck, badly crashed. It seemed to have come off the bridge and dived into the wadi bank. There was a man at the wheel, but terribly injured.

“I tried to help him, Sheikh, but there was nothing I could do. My motor bicycle would never carry two, and I could not bring him up the bank. I pulled him out of the cab in case it caught fire. But he was dying, inshallah .”

The dying man had begged him, as a brother, to take his satchel and deliver it to Marka. He described the compound: near the street market, down from the Italian roundabout, a timber double door with a latched door for the lookout.

“I held him while he died, Sheikh, but I could not save him.”

The robed figure considered this for some while, then turned to look through the papers that had come from the satchel.

“Did you open the satchel?”

“No, Sheikh, it was not of my business.”

The amber eyes looked thoughtful.

“There was money in the satchel. Perhaps we have an honest man. What do you think, Jamma?”

The Somali smirked. The Preacher let out a torrent of Urdu at the Pakistanis. They moved forward and seized Opal.

“My men will return to that spot. They will examine the wreck, which must surely still be there. And the body of my servant. If you have lied, you will surely wish you had never come here. Meanwhile, you will stay and wait for their return.”

He was imprisoned again, but not in the decrepit shed in the yard from which an agile man might escape in the night. He was taken to a cellar with a sand floor and locked in. He was there for two days and a night. It was pitch-dark. He was given a plastic bottle of water, which he sipped sparingly in the blackness. When he was let out and brought upstairs, his eyes puckered and blinked furiously in the sunlight from the shutters. He was taken to the Preacher again.