The Catch: A Novel (33 page)

Munroe extended a hand, and when he reached her, he took it and said, “Are you Michael?”

She nodded. “Khalid?”

“Yes,” he said, and his English was crisp and articulate with a tinge of British, like the
hawaladar
’s. Cousin, the
hawaladar
had said, although in this part of the world
cousin
could mean any member of the extended family no matter how far removed. Munroe glanced toward the back of the truck, dented and rusted, an uncovered shell with rails too high for her to view the contents from the ground. “May I?” she said, and Khalid took a step back as if to give her space.

She used the rear tire as a boost, a wheel lashed to the axle with a cut of two-by-four and rope instead of lug nuts, pulled herself up with her right hand so as not to put another round of strain on the weakened ribs, but getting up was still its own form of torture. She scanned the contents of the truck bed, then dropped off and dusted her hands on her pants.

The
hawaladar
had held true to his word: fuel, generator, air compressor, drinking water, food, and shade. Weapons would come later. She said, “Do you want to unload here or bring the truck around to the shore?”

“Let me see the spot first,” Khalid said.

Munroe turned toward Amber and Natan, both still glaring and silent. The men showing up on the property wasn’t a surprise; she’d briefed them on the truck’s pending arrival, so it shouldn’t have been an issue. Munroe waved and said, “I’ve got it. Relax.”

Natan turned on his heels and stomped inside, and it was easy to imagine that he’d found someplace that he could use to keep an eye on the newcomers through a scope.

Munroe shook hands with the other two Somali men and they introduced themselves as Omar and Ali. Like Khalid’s, their English was clean and articulate, though without the undertones of having been educated abroad. Amber left her perch by the door, approached the truck, and stood by Munroe, and when Munroe introduced her to Khalid, Amber held out a hand, and in an awkward shuffling he didn’t accept, and neither did Omar or Ali.

“It’s a cultural thing,” Munroe said. One example out of thousands as to why she dressed and carried herself as a boy so much of the time. “Not personal.”

Amber’s brow furrowed, but she was smart enough not to say anything. The men might, in their own time, discover Munroe’s gender, but by then the cultural and religious boundaries would already have been crossed so often that for the sake of the job they would continue as though nothing had changed. Munroe led Khalid down to the beach, and Amber followed a few feet behind.

T
HE DHOW ARRIVED
in the late afternoon, a forty-foot wooden vessel with a high bow, twin engines, and a rattan roof on posts that provided shade for the back half. Calls and shouts that came from the outside pulled Munroe out of a hazy heat-induced sleep, and she rose from the rough-hewn bench that passed for a sofa. Locked the front door from the inside and then left the house through the rear. Stood on the small porch watching the arrival, shading her eyes from the afternoon sun, while the boat slowed and dropped anchor a few hundred meters offshore, just beyond the break.

The truck, which had been backed down to the edge of the sand since morning, had drawn the attention of nearby villagers. The number of onlookers had ebbed and flowed throughout the day and at the moment eight men and boys were seated under the shade of a mango tree at the edge of the property, staring at the parked vehicle and the lazy lack of movement as if the circus had come to town.

Amber left the house and stood beside Munroe, and then together they strode down to the sand and sat on the beach to watch while the two men on the boat lowered a pirogue over the side and one paddled in to shore.

“Where’s Natan?” Munroe said.

“Up in a tree somewhere, maybe.”

“He doesn’t trust them?”

“Natan doesn’t trust anybody.”

“What about you?”

“You know what you’re doing,” Amber said. “That’s all I need. Natan knows it too, he just doesn’t like it.”

The pirogue neared the waterline and the three men from the truck went into the water to push it up along the sand. They handled the little craft deftly, and Munroe studied their movements, gauged their ability to work together. They weren’t strangers to the ocean, and that would be a plus; she waited until the men were back up on the shore and then stood and shook the sand off her pants. They knew what needed to get done and she’d only be in the way and cause animosity if she started handing out orders. She returned to the house, to the kitchen, and collected food and water for the captain.

She left the door open while he ate so that air could circulate and lessen the smell of sweat and body odor. He would have heard the commotion throughout the morning, and an information void was its own form of questioning. She allowed him time and silence and he made it halfway through his meager meal before he said, “Who makes all the noise outside?”

“We’re preparing for the next phase of the project,” she said.

“You are going to Somalia?”

“We. We are going to Somalia, unless you’d rather go to the Russians.”

“There are no good choices,” he said, and he continued to eat, so she let him be. After another few minutes he said, “You find the name I give you?”

“Both names,” she said. “You’ve managed to stay hidden for a long time.”

He nodded as if to affirm the obvious and said, “You believe everything you read?”

She’d proven printed facts wrong so often that she rarely believed
anything
she read, and that the people who wanted him had hijacked his ship some twenty years after he’d gone on the run only strengthened her lack of belief. “I’d be interested in hearing your version of events,” she said.

He set the last of the food aside and drank down half a liter of water. “Nothing good will come from telling,” he said, and wiped his mouth, lay back, and closed his eyes. “Maybe you figure it out by yourself. Then you know.”

“Perhaps,” she said, and stood and stepped into the hall.

Found Natan waiting there, weapon slung over his shoulder, leaned back, one leg kicked up against the opposite wall. It was as if he’d been listening to the conversation while waiting for her, suspicion and mistrust worn like a shirt, as if from his point of view every move she made was a potential betrayal, as if she’d just come from conspiring with the captain and the Somalis on the property were planning to kidnap them all and deliver them to pirates once they were under way.

Munroe shut the door and sent the captain back into darkness, resecured the handle with the chair, and when she’d finished, Natan straightened and took a step forward and in doing so blocked her path. She made to inch beyond him and he stepped directly in front of her.

Without the energy or desire to try to out-alpha him, she sighed and said, “If you have something to say, say it. Otherwise, get out of my way.”

He glowered for several long seconds before stepping aside in a movement that wasn’t deference but rather magnanimous wish granting.

Amber had moved to the porch, so Munroe sat next to her and, like the crowd of onlookers under the mango tree, lazed in the shade swatting away flies, watching as two of the Somali men paddled the pirogue out to the dhow, placed a fuel barrel within straps to be raised onto the vessel, and then paddled back for another turn loading: one slow trip at a time; the way of a continent where time and manual labor were the cheapest commodities of all.

The truck rolled off the property before dawn, a belching, creaking, crawling lurch up the gutted track between trees and overgrown vegetation, and Munroe braced her feet against the peeling vinyl of the dash to keep from getting tossed about. They’d left Khalid and one of the men from the dhow behind. Omar, as driver and presumably the one in charge, had invited Munroe to take the passenger seat, relegating Ali and the second boatman to the truck bed.

Munroe called the
hawaladar
along the way, confirmed their progress, and updated him with details that Khalid would already have told him, and they rode the long journey into the city for the airport, an inconvenient trip that detoured them back onto the island, and then off again, west as if they were to make the slog to Nairobi, then south again toward the airport and the complex of stone and concrete walls and metal roofs that warehoused airfreight through the customs-clearing process.

Munroe stepped from the truck to an area dry and dusty, where even the aggressive grass and foliage couldn’t compete with the trampling of far too many footsteps. Omar pointed out the
hawaladar
’s Land Rover, and Munroe walked in its direction while the men from the truck clambered out, found shade near the front tires, and sat there, content to wait.

The rear door of the Land Rover opened before she reached it, and the
hawaladar
invited her into the air-conditioning. She said, “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“We’re in a hurry and there will be a lot of hands to fill,” he said.

“I figured you’d have one of your people handle that.”

“It will be faster if I do,” he said, and she knew what he meant.

The clearing process was a madness of pushing paper: multiple queues that amounted to mobs fighting for space in first-come firstserve lines that were never lines; seemingly endless rounds of paperwork transferred from authorized stamp to authorized stamp; money changing hands to keep files from becoming permanently stuck at the bottom of piles; money changing hands to revalue items and minimize duty paid; and eventually somewhere in the bowels of the process, money changing hands for access to those with the power to put an end to the ordeal, cutting days into hours by decreasing the number of additional desks the paperwork had to traverse.

It was never the knowledge of how it was done that shortened time and cost, it was always where the connections tied, and this was what had made Munroe valuable in Djibouti, though Leo and Amber could never appreciate how valuable.

“How long do you think it will be?” she said.

“If the right people are in their office today, maybe late afternoon.”

She opened the door. “Have Omar give me a call before they head back. I need the ride.”

“You won’t stay?”

“There’s no reason,” she said. Stepped back out into the muggy humidity. “Soon as anyone sees a white face, the price will go up.”

“I’ll let you know,” he said, and she shut the door.

Munroe found Omar on the ground in the shade of the truck, a mat rolled out beneath him, while Ali and the man from the boat whom the others called Yusuf were seated on a mat one over, pulling khat leaves from a plastic bag, cans of 7UP beside them: the first khat use she’d seen in the
hawaladar
’s men, and although irritating, it was better to be aware now before her life was in their hands.

She sat beside Omar and said, “No khat for you?”

He shook his head and she read disgust in his face and knew that she’d found an ally. “What about Khalid?”

“No,” he said.

She nodded toward Ali and Yusuf. “There won’t be khat when we travel,” she said. “Will it be a problem?”

“I think no,” he said. Shrugged. “Maybe.”

She stood. A handful of khat addicts beginning withdrawals when clarity was most crucial would definitely be a problem.

“Let me see your phone,” she said, and Omar handed it to her. She punched in her number and handed it back. “Call me before you go back. I’ll be in the city. I need to return with you.” She smiled. “Don’t leave me here.”

“I’ll call,” he said, though she had her doubts.

She left him for the guard shack that was the freight depot exit, continued past other parked trucks and men lounging in the shade the way the
hawaladar
’s men did now, continued beyond the exit, walked to the nearest junction, and under the shade of a palm cluster waited for vehicles to pass, utilizing the dichotomy of the continent and the privilege of white skin to hitch a ride with a car heading back to the city.

Her host was a portly man in shirt and tie, with sweat stains bleeding out where the air conditioner had left off. Confirming that he was headed in the same direction as she, he invited her into the passenger seat and filled the drive with friendly questions that she satisfied with generic answers twisted back into questions about his work and life so that she kept him talking. He wandered on about the Kenyan Wildlife Service, and her mind traveled elsewhere, filling in the blanks of conversation with just enough to give the impression of being present until they reached Mombasa.

He left her in the middle of Moi Avenue and she waited at the curb until traffic had swallowed him, then walked to the nearest tower and found a bistro on the ground floor; stayed long enough to eat and catch her breath. She called the Royal Court Hotel and asked for Sergey, was redirected to his room, and with the confirmation
that the delegation was still at the hotel, she hung up before the line connected.

Munroe found a forex to change a few hundred dollars and then another Internet café. There, she sent the picture of the captain on her phone to her e-mail and from her e-mail printed it out; scanned through e-mail subjects before closing, caught another from Bradford.

She wanted what he offered, the idea of riding off into the proverbial sunset; a want that had haunted her over the years and that she’d fought against, always choosing the hard way because pain was comfortable and familiar, and in emptiness there was never a risk of loss because she had nothing to lose.

Munroe paused, fingers over the keyboard, and with an inhale and a sigh, typed the words that even now violated instinct and self-preservation.