“Where’s the nearest village?”
“It was about a kilometer due south of here. But it’s not there anymore.”
“Right,” he said. Then he turned to me and asked, “You coming?”
I nodded but then turned back to the Red Cross man and asked, “What are you going to do about the soldiers?”
“What we usually do. Stall them while the pilot radios the Somalian central command—if you can call it that—and orders some officer over here to get them off our backs. But you both better get out of here now. The soldiers really don’t see the point of journalists.”
“We’re gone,” I said. “Thanks for the lift.”
The Brit and I headed out of the cabin. As soon as we hit the ground, he tapped me on the shoulder and pointed toward the three Red Cross jeeps. Crouching low, we ran in their direction, not looking back until we were behind them. This turned out to be a strategically smart move, as we had managed to dodge the attention of the Somalian soldiers, who had now surrounded the chopper. Four of them had their guns trained on the Red Cross team. One of the soldiers started shouting at the aid workers—but they didn’t seem flustered at all, and began the “stalling for time” gambit. Though I couldn’t hear much over the din of the rotor motor, it was clear that the Red Cross guys had played this dangerous game before and knew exactly what to do. The Brit nudged me with his elbow.
“See that clump of trees over there,” he said, pointing toward a small patch of gum trees around fifty yards from us.
I nodded. After one fast, final glance at the soldiers—now ripping into a case of medical supplies—we made a dash for it. It couldn’t have taken more than twenty seconds to cover the fifty yards, but, God, did it seem long. I knew that if the soldiers saw two figures running for cover, their natural reaction would be to shoot us down. When we reached the woods, we ducked behind a tree. Neither of us was winded—but when I looked at the Brit, I caught the briefest flicker of adrenaline-fueled tension in his eyes. Once he realized that I’d glimpsed it, he immediately turned on his sardonic smile.
“Well done,” he whispered. “Think you can make it over there without getting shot?”
I looked in the direction he was pointing—another meager grove of trees that fronted the now-deluged river. I met his challenging smile. “I never get shot,” I said. Then we ran out of the trees, making a manic beeline for the next patch of cover. This run took around a minute—during which time the world went silent, and all I could hear were my feet scything through the high grass. I was genuinely tense. But like that moment in the helicopter when we first came under fire, I tried to concentrate on something abstract like my breathing. The Brit was ahead of me. But as soon as he reached the trees, something brought him to a sudden halt. I stopped in my tracks as I saw him walking backward, his arms held high in the air. Emerging from the trees was a young Somalian soldier. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen. His rifle was trained on the Brit, who was quietly attempting to talk his way out of this situation. Suddenly the soldier saw me—and when he turned his gun on me, I made a desperate error of judgment. Instead of immediately acting submissive—coming to a complete halt, putting my hands above my head, and making no sudden movements (as I had been trained to do)—I hit the ground, certain he was going to fire at me. This caused him to roar at me, as he now tried to get me in his sights. Then, suddenly, the Brit tackled him, knocking him to the ground. I was now back on my feet, running toward the scene. The Brit swung a clenched fist, slamming it into the soldier’s stomach, knocking the wind out of him. The kid groaned, and the Brit brought his boot down hard on the hand that was clutching the gun. The kid screamed.
“Let go of the gun,” the Brit demanded.
“Fuck you,” the kid yelled. So the Brit brought his boot down even harder. This time the soldier released the weapon, which the Brit quickly scooped up and had trained on the soldier in a matter of seconds.
“I hate impoliteness,” the Brit said, cocking the rifle.
The kid now began to sob, curling up into a fetal position, pleading for his life. I turned to the Brit and said, “You can’t . . .”
But he just looked at me and winked. Then, turning back to the child soldier, he said, “Did you hear my friend? She doesn’t want me to shoot you.”
The kid said nothing. He just curled himself tighter into a ball, crying like the frightened child he was.
“I think you should apologize to her, don’t you?” said the Brit. I could see the gun trembling in his hands.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” the kid said, the words choked with sobs. The Brit looked at me.
“Apology accepted?” he asked. I nodded.
The Brit nodded at me, then turned back to the kid and asked, “How’s your hand?”
“Hurts.”
“Sorry about that,” he said. “You can go now, if you like.”
The kid, still trembling, got to his feet. His face was streaked with tears, and there was a damp patch around his crotch where he’d wet himself out of fear. He looked at us with terror in his eyes—still certain he was going to be shot. To his credit, the Brit reached out and put a steadying hand on the soldier’s shoulder.
“It’s all right,” he said quietly. “Nothing’s going to happen to you. But you have to promise me one thing: you must not tell anyone in your company that you met us. Will you do that?”
The soldier glanced at the gun still in the Brit’s hands and nodded. Many times.
“Good. One final question. Are there any army patrols down river from here?”
“No. Our base got washed away. I got separated from the others.”
“How about the village near here?”
“Nothing left of it.”
“All the people washed away?”
“Some made it to a hill.”
“Where’s the hill?”
The soldier pointed toward an overgrown path through the trees.
“How long from here on foot?” he asked.
“Half an hour.”
The Brit looked at me and said, “That’s our story.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said, meeting his look.
“Run along now,” the Brit said to the soldier.
“My gun . . .”
“Sorry, but I’m keeping it.”
“I’ll get in big trouble without it.”
“Say it was washed away in the flood. And remember: I expect you to keep that promise you made. You never saw us. Understood?”
The kid looked back at the gun, then up again at the Brit.
“I promise.”
“Good lad. Now go.”
The boy soldier nodded and dashed out of the trees in the general direction of the chopper. When he was out of sight, the Brit shut his eyes, drew in a deep breath, and said, “Fucking hell.”
“And so say all of us.”
He opened his eyes and looked at me. “You all right?” he said.
“Yeah—but I feel like a complete jerk.”
He grinned. “You were a complete jerk—but it happens. Especially when you get surprised by a kid with a gun. On which note . . .”
He motioned with his thumb that we should make tracks. Which is exactly what we did—negotiating our way through the thicket of woods, finding the overgrown path, threading our way to the edge of swamped fields. We walked nonstop for fifteen minutes, saying nothing. The Brit led the way. I walked a few steps behind. I watched my companion as we hiked deeper into this submerged terrain. He was very focused on the task of getting us as far away from the soldiers as possible. He was also acutely conscious of any irregular sounds emanating from this open terrain. Twice he stopped and turned back to me, putting his finger to his lips when he thought he heard something. We only started to walk again when he was certain no one was on our tail. I was intrigued by the way he held the soldier’s gun. Instead of slinging it over his shoulder, he carried it in his right hand, the barrel pointed downward, the rifle held away from his body. And I knew tha
t he would never have shot that soldier. Because he was so obviously uncomfortable holding a gun.
After around fifteen minutes, he pointed to a couple of large rocks positioned near the river. We sat down but didn’t say anything for a moment as we continued to gauge the silence, trying to discern approaching footsteps in the distance. After a moment, he spoke.
“The way I figure it, if that kid had told on us, his comrades would be here by now.”
“You certainly scared him into thinking you would kill him.”
“He needed scaring. Because he would have shot you without compunction.”
“I know. Thank you.”
“All part of the service.” Then he proffered his hand and said, “Tony Hobbs. Who do you write for?”
“The Boston Post.”
An amused smile crossed his lips. “Do you really?”
“Yes,” I said. “Really. We do have foreign correspondents, you know.”
“Really?” he said, mimicking my accent. “So you’re a foreign correspondent?”
“Really,” I said, attempting to mimic his accent.
To his credit, he laughed. And said, “I deserved that.”
“Yes. You did.”
“So where do you correspond from?” he asked.
“Cairo. And let me guess. You write for the Sun?”
“The Chronicle, actually.”
I tried not to appear impressed. “The Chronicle actually, actually?” I said.
“You give as good as you get.”
“It comes with being the correspondent of a smallish newspaper. You have to hold your own with arrogant big boys.”
“Oh, you’ve already decided I’m arrogant?”
“I worked that out two minutes after first seeing you in the chopper. You based in London?”
“Cairo, actually.”
“But I know the Chronicle guy there. Henry . . .”
“Bartlett. Got sick. Ulcer thing. So they sent for me from Tokyo around ten days ago.”
“I used to cover Tokyo. Four years ago.”
“Well, I’m obviously following you around.”
There was a sound of nearby footsteps. We both tensed. Tony picked up the rifle he had leaned against the rock. Then we heard the steps grow nearer. As we stood up, a young Somalian woman came running down the path, a child in her arms. The woman couldn’t have been more than twenty; the baby was no more than two months old. The mother was gaunt, the child chillingly still. As soon as the woman saw us, she began to scream in a dialect that neither of us understood, making wild gesticulations at the gun in Tony’s hand. Tony understood immediately. He tossed the gun into the rushing waters of the river—adding it to the flooded debris washing downstream. The gesture seemed to surprise the woman. But as she turned back to me and started pleading with me again, her legs buckled. Tony and I both grabbed her, keeping her upright. I glanced down at her lifeless baby, still held tightly in her arms. I looked up at the Brit. He nodded in the direction of the Red Cross chopper. We each put an arm around her emaciated waist, and began the slow journey back to the clearing where we’d landed earlier.
When we reached it, I was relieved to see that several Somalian Army jeeps had rolled up near the chopper, and the previously marauding troops had been brought under control. We escorted her past the soldiers, and made a beeline for the Red Cross chopper. Two of the aid workers from the flight were still unloading supplies.
“Who’s the doctor around here?” I asked. One of the guys looked up, saw the woman and child, and sprang into action, while his colleague politely told us to get lost.
“There’s nothing more you can do now.”
Nor, it turned out, was there any chance that we’d be allowed back down the path toward that washed-out village—as the Somalian Army had now blocked it off. When I found the head Red Cross medic and told him about the villagers perched on a hill around two kilometers from here, he said (in his crispest Swiss accent), “We know all about it. And we will be sending our helicopter as soon as the army gives us clearance.”
“Let us go with you,” I said.
“It’s not possible. The army will only allow three of our team to fly with them—”
“Tell them we’re part of the team,” Tony said.
“We need to send medical men.”
“Send two,” Tony said, “and let one of us—”
But we were interrupted by the arrival of some army officer. He tapped Tony on the shoulder.
“You—papers.”
Then he tapped me. “You too.”
We handed over our respective passports. “Red Cross papers,” he demanded. When Tony started to make up some far-fetched story about leaving them behind, the officer rolled his eyes and said one damning word, “Journalists.”
Then he turned to his soldiers and said, “Get them on the next chopper back to Mogadishu.”
We returned to the capital under virtual armed guard. When we landed at another military field on the outskirts of the capital, I fully expected us to be taken into custody and arrested. But instead, one of the soldiers on the plane asked me if I had any American dollars.
“Perhaps,” I said—and then, taking a chance, asked him if he could arrange a ride for us to the Central Hotel for ten bucks.
“You pay twenty, you get your ride.”
He even commandeered a jeep to get us there. En route, Tony and I spoke for the first time since being placed under armed guard.
“Not a lot to write about, is there?” I said.
“I’m sure we’ll both manage to squeeze something out of it.”
We found two rooms on the same floor and agreed to meet after we’d filed our respective stories. Around two hours later—shortly after I’d dispatched by email seven hundred words on the general disarray in the Juba River Valley, the sight of floating bodies in the river, the infrastructural chaos, and the experience of being fired upon in a Red Cross helicopter by rebel forces—there was a knock at my door.
Tony stood outside, holding a bottle of Scotch and two glasses.
“This looks promising,” I said. “Come on in.”
He didn’t leave again until seven the next morning—when we checked out to catch the early morning flight back to Cairo. From the moment I saw him in the chopper, I knew that we would inevitably fall into bed with each other, should the opportunity arise. Because that’s how this game worked. Foreign correspondents rarely had spouses or “significant others”—and most people you met in the field were definitely not the sort you wanted to share a bed with for ten minutes, let alone a night.
But when I woke next to Tony, the thought struck me: He’s actually living where I live. Which led to what was, for me, a most unusual thought: And I’d actually like to see him again. In fact, I’d like to see him tonight.
TWO
I’VE NEVER CONSIDERED myself the sentimental type. On the contrary, I’ve always recognized in myself a certain cut-and-run attitude when it comes to romance—something my one and only fiancé told me around seven years ago, when I broke it off with him. His name was Richard Pettiford. He was a Boston lawyer—smart, erudite, driven. And I really did like him. The problem was, I also liked my work.
“You’re always running away,” he said after I told him that I was becoming the Post’s correspondent in Tokyo.
“This is a big professional move,” I said.
“You said that when you went to Washington.”
“That was just a six-month assignment—and I saw you every weekend.”
“But it was still running away.”
“It was a great opportunity. Like going to Tokyo.”
“But I’m a great opportunity.”
“You’re right,” I said. “You are. But so am I. So come to Tokyo with me.”
“But I won’t make partner if I do that,” he said.
“And if I stay, I won’t make a very good partner’s wife.”
“If you really loved me, you’d stay.”
I
laughed. And said, “Then I guess I don’t love you.”
Which pretty much ended our two-year liaison there and then—because when you make an admission like that, there’s very little comeback. Though I was truly saddened that we couldn’t “make a go of it” (to borrow an expression that Richard used just a little too often), I also knew that I couldn’t play the suburban role he was offering. Anyway, had I accepted such a part, my passport would now only contain a few holiday stamps from Bermuda and other resort spots, rather than the twenty crammed pages of visas I’d managed to obtain over the years. And I certainly wouldn’t have ended up sitting on a flight from Addis Ababa to Cairo, getting pleasantly tipsy with a wholly charming, wholly cynical Brit, with whom I’d just spent the night . . .
“So you’ve really never been married?” Tony asked me as the seat belt signs were switched off.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” I said. “I don’t swoon easily.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.
“Foreign correspondents aren’t the marrying kind.”
“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”
I laughed, then asked, “And you?”
“You must be joking.”
“Never came close?”
“Everyone’s come close once. Just like you.”
“How do you know I’ve come close?” I said.
“Because everyone’s come close once.”
“Didn’t you just say that?”
“Touché. And let me guess—you didn’t marry the guy because you’d just been offered your first overseas posting . . .”
“My, my—you are perceptive,” I said.
“Hardly,” he said. “It’s just how it always works.”
Naturally, he was right. And he was clever enough not to ask me too much about the fellow in question, or any other aspects of my so-called romantic history, or even where I grew up. If anything, the very fact that he didn’t press the issue (other than to ascertain that I too had successfully dodged marriage) impressed me. Because it meant that—unlike most other foreign correspondents I had met—he wasn’t treating me like some girlie who had been transferred from the Style section to the front line. Nor did he try to impress me with his big city credentials—and the fact that the Chronicle of London carried more international clout than the Boston Post. If anything, he spoke to me as a professional equal. He wanted to hear about the contacts I’d made in Cairo (as he was new there) and to trade stories about covering Japan. Best of all, he wanted to make me laugh . . . which he did with tremendous ease. As I was quickly discovering, Tony Hobbs wasn’t just a great talker; he was also a terrific storyteller.
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