Elmore Leonard - Djibouti

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. "TWO 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." "HON, 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. WHAT BILLY 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."