The Sensory Deception (25 page)

She picked up her laptop. The e-mail from the Santa Monica real estate agent was still on the monitor. She typed, “Get me the contract,” closed the e-mail, and brought up an Internet browser. The State Department web page had a long list of phone numbers, none of which would be answered at this time of night.

She had to do something, so she called Ringo.

“Yeah, Chopper sent me an e-mail,” he said. “Chopper’s fine. The good news is that we’re already getting Moby data. I’ll send you some pictures of the whale; he’s huge. Even compared with
the ship, he’s giant. I mean, he’s a whale, so I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise.”

“You think he’ll be okay?”

“Chopper? Don’t waste time worrying about Chopper. His blood cells are probably self-healing. Separated shoulder. Come on.”

“Farley’s pretty worried.”

“The real bad news is that those guys won’t be back here for at least another month. I can’t work on the pods, finish debugging the database, and invent an entire sonar-visualization software package at once. Thank god you nixed the refugee VR.”

“I’m signing a lease in Santa Monica for the arcade.”

“Really? The arcade? It’s really going to happen. Sweet! And Glo? I kind of exaggerated. The database is in pretty good shape, and the pods—that’s just busywork. I’m way ahead on the sonar-visualization project and Daredevil.”

The next morning, at 9:00 a.m. sharp Eastern time, Gloria called the State Department. Two hours later she spoke to an actual human who could answer actual questions, but the answers were all wrong.

“His best option is the US Embassy in Nairobi. They can coordinate with the hospital.”

“They can’t get to Nairobi,” Gloria said. Having repeated the situation a dozen times already, she wasn’t sure what she’d said to this particular bureaucrat. She struggled to remain calm and friendly. “Is there any way he could get some help from the navy? I understand that we have ships nearby in the Seychelles Islands.”

The woman gave Gloria another phone number and, before connecting her, asked why the ship wouldn’t take Chopper to Kenya. She resisted the urge to explain that the injured man and the captain of the ship would rather protect a pod of whales than save the man’s life.

The person who answered for the navy gave a much more direct and conclusive response: “No.”

Having tried the pedestrian approach, she went down the hall and leaned into Bupin’s office. He said, “You have found people I do not know. This is Joel McKay’s rodeo.”

She continued down the hall to the other corner office.

McKay’s admin said that he wouldn’t be able to meet with her until the next day.

Gloria said, “Well, this is one of those times that I have to take Mr. McKay up on his ‘open door’ policy.”

The admin offered her a commiserating smile and went back to work.

Gloria knocked on McKay’s door, heard a grunt, and walked in. McKay stepped from behind his desk, his golf cleats clicking against the tile floor.

She explained the situation.

“They went to the Indian Ocean?” He said. “Whose harebrained idea was that?”

“Their only other option is a doctor in a Somali refugee camp.”

“Somalia? Do you know what will happen to this firm if one of our businesses gets caught up in Somali politics?” He slumped into his chair. “I don’t need this, don’t have time or energy for this.”

“If the navy will help them,” Gloria said, still standing at the door, “there won’t be any risk of their being involved with Somalia.”

“Close the damn door and sit down. I’ll make a call.”

McKay phoned an executive at Lockheed Martin. After exchanging pleasantries and updating each other on their golf handicaps, McKay said, “Who do I need to blow to get a little love from the navy? I’ve got a start-up doing some development
off the Somali coast and they need medical help.” He wrote down a name and phone number, hung up, pushed the piece of paper across his desk, and said, “Call Admiral Bontas; tell him you’re Gene Winthrop’s niece. He’ll do whatever you want.”

She did as told. She lied to the admiral but didn’t get what she wanted. She was still at the office when Farley called back.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re in international waters traveling on a ship that’s been associated with terrorist activity—do you know what Randy Gaynes does to those whaling ships?”

“He protects animals from high-powered artillery,” Farley said. “I don’t doubt that the
Cetacean Avenger
is on a bunch of undesirable lists. Since there are no objective witnesses on the high seas, every corporate fishing ship that he bothers probably reports made-up atrocities.”

“Are you sure Chopper can’t wait?”

“It’s swelling up pretty bad. Chopper won’t admit to any pain, but he seems groggy and I don’t like the look on the medic’s face when she touches the wound.”

Neither of them spoke for almost a minute, and then Farley said, “Sayyid Hassan is an honorable man in a tough position. He vouches for the doctor, says he’s an experienced surgeon.” He sounded tired. “The medic says that the dangerous parts of Chopper’s wounds should be easy to fix with scalpels and sutures. Gaynes can come back for us in a couple of weeks, maybe a month.” He exhaled into the phone. “I feel like I’m talking myself into it, but it’s the only reasonable option.”

“I want you to come home.” It came out by accident. She added, “I mean, I want you and my father to come home.”

“Gloria, I want to come back. I’ve had—”

The delay in the satellite transmission caused Gloria to interrupt. “I wish we had—sorry, what were you saying?”

“What?”

“You first.”

Farley cleared his throat. “I feel that many things between us have been unsaid and I’d like to say them.” Then he added, “But not on the phone.”

“Farley,” Gloria said, “I want to hear them, too. I want you to come home. Please be careful. Please?”

“Thank you, Gloria. I will.”

“Listen to my father. He’ll protect you.”

T
ahir understood that Farley couldn’t see beyond his experience with the whale. He understood how excitement combined with success produces a sense of invulnerability. He also understood that Farley had to care for Chopper. It amounted to a basic tenet of civilization: the chief earns the trust of his tribe by demonstrating that the tribe exists to care for the individual.

On the ride to shore, Farley held Chopper steady as the boat traversed the waves. Chopper’s entire body had swelled and stiffened. Farley was too engrossed in Chopper’s condition to notice that when the ship landed, the crews from the other boats fanned out to guard the walk to Sy’s camp. Tahir wasn’t sure that Farley would have recognized it if he’d been watching.

Set on a dry, grassy plain less than a mile from the coast, the refugee camp was constructed of shards of modern civilization interspersed with centuries-old African technology. Chain-link fencing that had been reclaimed from forgotten UN projects separated earthen huts with thatched roofs. Women filled ornate clay pots with rubber hoses attached to the well pump and carried them away on their heads. There were thousands of people. The women were dressed in approximations of traditional Muslim veils,
khmar
, and head coverings,
hijab
. They managed this with long scarves loosely wrapped about their heads, covering most
of their hair, though few of them covered their faces. Their robes were also configured of scarves and loose fabric, draped about their shoulders and extending past their thighs. Few of them had sufficient fabric to reach the ground. The children wore shorts and T-shirts. Many of them limped and some lacked a limb. The men were all younger than Sy and wore threadbare shirts and pants. Some carried rifles.

Sayyid Hassan called it a village, a fort, or a kingdom, depending on his immediate need. Tahir called it a refugee camp. He’d seen and lived in enough of them to know.

Fifty miles south of Mogadishu, King Sy flew the Somalian flag. Tahir struggled to respect the man’s pride. In Tahir’s experience, men who identified with flags more than they did with the people they led had a proclivity for failure, and failure meant death. Sometimes it meant genocide.

The camp was configured around what had once been a school. Following architecture that Tahir recognized as Soviet or Cuban standard for Africa, it consisted of three parallel corridors of ten classrooms each connected by outdoor walkways covered by decaying roofs. The ground between corridors was taken up by vegetable gardens. Sy told them that one of the corridors still served as a school. There were nine hundred students, and everyone under the age of eighteen was required to attend the first six grades of school, even the girls, though in separate classrooms.

Tahir, Sy, and Farley delivered Chopper to the infirmary, a partitioned section of one of the former classrooms. Tahir waited outside. He heard yelling, a few grunts, and one long moan. Farley emerged a few minutes after the moan.

“Chopper has the pain threshold of an elephant,” Farley said. “Remind me to never dislocate a bone.”

The doctor emerged six hours later. Like Sy, Dr. Osman was British-educated. He said that Chopper had been close to
hemorrhaging. “Another day and he’d have bled to death, but I set the bones right and sewed things up. I don’t have equipment for reconstructing his shoulder. He’ll need some pins to hold the joint in place while it heals and a specialist to care for the tendons, but he should be able to travel in a few days.”

That evening, Sy served an elaborate meal in his private quarters to Farley and Tahir along with Dr. Osman. The walls were made of thick tent canvas, and the roof, which towered in a sharp spire, was built of fresh-smelling blades of yucca laid over a wood frame. The floor was covered in overlapping layers of red carpeting furnished with a plethora of colored pillows.

Through the meal, Sy and Dr. Osman described the camp. The adults, they said, all spoke Somali; most were also conversant in Arabic, and many knew fragments of English or Italian. The children were raised to speak Somali and educated in both Arabic and English. Tahir would have no trouble communicating in Arabic and expected to absorb enough Somali to understand the gist of conversations.

Sy governed his “kingdom”—a term he never said without an exaggerated flourish—with a form of traditional Somali law called Xeer. Societal rules rested on customs of marriage, partitioning of resources, care for the poor, and negotiation of grievances, with reliance on elders to serve as judges when necessary. Sy himself spent two hours each day addressing conflicts in a makeshift court.

The largest building had been converted to a mosque. Dr. Osman explained the importance of literacy in history, arithmetic, and geometry to understanding the depth of Allah’s words as recorded in the Qur’an by the Prophet. Sy blamed religious fundamentalists for holding back his country and forcing it into the current state of disorder. “The pirates have no interest in ruling.
It is the duty of religious leaders to civilize people, not to fragment them.”

Dr. Osman was not in complete accord with this position. He cited the end of the Cold War as that point in history when the world forgot Somalia, no longer important as a domino in the game of superpowers. Whatever resemblance to civilization Somalia had enjoyed decayed when Soviet support disappeared. Sy described the dictator Siad Barre as a patriot who had done all he could to hold the country together. A state of virtual chaos had descended when Barre was killed in 1992. Dr. Osman took issue, though, and called Barre a tyrant, adding that tyrants are tyrants regardless of the illusion of civilization. Tahir appreciated Sy’s tolerance for dissent. It wasn’t common in these conditions.

Tahir had known many liberal Muslims in his life. Without people like these, he never could have protected his wife and daughter through Iran’s Islamic revolution. Tahir tried to maintain his vigilance, tried to resist the urge to like these men, but they were too familiar. Listening to these men felt like a homecoming.

Four months later, Tahir would look back on this as the moment he made a critical mistake.

After the meal, the four men leaned back on pillows. Dr. Osman lamented the fact that they had hookahs but no tobacco. Sy then looked at Farley, eyebrows raised in expectation.

Farley opened with questions about the biggest problems that Sy faced—not the obvious day-to-day survival issues, but the big picture, the pressure points that, if solved, could bring genuine peace to Sy’s camp and complete the transition from refugee camp to village.

Tahir recognized that Farley was probing for Sy’s weak spot. Sy and the doctor reiterated comments they’d already made about the causes of Somalia’s current political state. In the
process, though, Tahir saw what Farley saw. The world’s disregard for Somalia plagued Sy. He craved respect, wanted to be known as a citizen protecting his country’s resources. Instead he was branded a pirate for doing the job of a coast guard.

Over the previous decade, barges from European countries had been dumping barrels of toxic waste right off the coast, hundreds if not thousands of barrels. Sy went on a tirade about the deformities suffered by some of the children born in his camp and ranted about how difficult it was to teach poisoned youth to read.