by Chris Thrall
Rather surprisingly, the stall in the bazaar was a little short on Dutch soccer shirts, so after trying on a whole range of clothes and footwear – most of them ridiculous, the boys having no idea of Western fashion – they settled on the ones they liked the most and went to pay.
“Wait!”
Mohamed dashed back though the racks, returning with two Day-Glo orange parkas complete with toggles and fake-fur-trimmed hoods.
“It’s cold in Europe.”
“Yes, you are probably right.”
The final item on the list was a travel guide. Almost all the tourists visiting the farm carried a Lonely Planet, and Ahmed deemed it imperative to have something similar. There was a secondhand bookstore in the bazaar, so they went in to have a look around.
“Here!” said Mohamed after browsing a couple of minutes, holding up the Encyclopedia of the European Monetary Union with a triumphant grin.
“En-cy-clo-peee-dia!” Ahmed beamed, delighted to show off his growing proficiency in English yet oblivious to the tome’s intended audience.
“Look! Cheechee and Chongee!”
Mohamed recognized the world-famous stoners from his trips to the cinema. Having giggled all the way through Still Smokin, he figured Cheech & Chong: The Unauthorized Autobiography would help them corner the hash market in Amsterdam.
They stowed their books and new wardrobe in a locker at the ferry port and walked to the harbor. After chatting to a friendly Swedish couple, who invited them aboard Lille Maria for a meal of meatballs and mashed potato served with a delicious red-berry sauce, the boys went in search of local fishermen, intent on investigating the possibility of crossing the Strait of Gibraltar in a motorboat.
An elderly man sat cross-legged on the dock next to a rusting trawler, weaving a shuttle of green twine through a damaged net at lightning speed. The boys’ minds flashed back to their work in Abu Yazza’s carpet factory. Despite the afternoon heat, the man wore a black woolen hat and a set of yellow rubber dungarees that has seen better days, along with a good few tons of sardines.
“Pas de problème,” he replied with a nonchalant shrug.
“And how many hours does it take to reach Spain in a boat like this?” asked Ahmed in French.
“Trois.” He held up three callused fingers. “Avec suffisamment diesel.”
“Oh.” Ahmed frowned. “And what would happen if we don’t have enough diesel?”
“Bonjour, Atlantique – phhhsssk!” The old man flicked a hand through the air, dramatizing the worst-case scenario – dragged out into the North Atlantic by the unforgiving current.
Mulling over the old man’s words, the boys headed toward the medina for their rendezvous with Naseem, eventually dismissing the idea of stealing a motorized vessel. They couldn’t simply pull up at the fuel pump in the harbor in a stolen boat, and if they ran out of diesel midpassage and drifted out into the ocean with a load of hashish on board it would be game over.
Mohamed was unusually quiet, hands in pockets and staring down as they walked.
“What’s up, sister?” Ahmed ruffled his hair.
“This crossing . . .” He sighed. “Are you sure we can make it? Why don’t we just run away now and live like we used to?”
“All our money is in the hut.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Listen!” Ahmed grabbed Mohamed’s arm and pulled him to a halt. “Anywhere we go in this place, the Grower will find us. And you know what that means.”
“How about Algeria?” Mohamed looked up inquiringly.
“Ha! Swap a pig for a hog?” Ahmed spat in the dirt.
Mohamed knew it to be true.
Ahmed softened his tone. “Look, little brother, the hut is our honeypot, our ticket out of here. I promise you it will be worth it when we step ashore in Spain as free men.”
He cocked his head at the sea to remind his friend how close their destination was.
“Am-ster-dam-am!” Mohamed broke into a grin.
“Jiggy, jiggy, jiggy!” Ahmed threw a high five, and to cheer Mohamed up further, added, “Hey, you can read English?”
“Of course.”
“Look what I got!”
He reached under his manky T-shirt, pulled a hardback book from the waistband of his pants and waved Den Kompletta Guiden till Segling in front of Mohamed’s face as if hitting the jackpot.
“That’s a Swedish sailing book, you idiot!”
“Oh . . .” Ahmed was crestfallen for a moment before beaming again. “Hey, we can look at the pictures!”
Approaching the medina, Ahmed remembered Mohamed hadn’t briefed him on the movie. It was important to get their story straight before meeting Naseem.
“It was about a man with a brave heart in Scotland Land. They call him Wall-yam Willis, the Brave Heart Man.” Mohamed fell silent, looking somewhat nonplussed.
“What is it?”
“It’s . . .”
“Come on, tell me!”
“Ahmed?”
“What?”
“Is Amsterdam like Scotland Land?”
“No, I don’t think so. Why?”
“In Scotland Land the men have blue faces and they wear short skirts, like the infidel women. And they are savages – really savages. Fight like the Berber!”
- 31 -
“Next stop Portugal!”
Hans was in good spirits as Future sliced through a moderate sea in close proximity to land. Marcel had agreed to meet them in the Canary Islands, but was heading Sietske for the Moroccan port of Tangier first “to see some ‘guys,’ you know?”
“Bop rabbit!” Penny paused to adjust her blindfold before tapping the rubber fender down gently.
“Missed me!” Jessica squealed, kneeling opposite on deck. She loved playing Bop Rabbit, trying to guess where your opponent is and “bop” them accordingly.
With the sun on his face, Hans enjoyed the moment. It had been a while since he felt so relaxed. The endless phone calls, emails, lab reports, court appearances and surveillance operations crammed into a week at the Larsson Investigation Agency were far from his mind, as was the awkward ritual of receiving condolences and well wishes.
Unbeknown to Penny, Hans filled a bucket with seawater. Shh! he signaled to Jessica, climbing up beside her.
As their shipmate raised the bunny whacker and announced “Bop rabbit!” a second time, Hans delivered an impromptu shower.
“Ahh! You swine!” She lifted the blindfold to find the Larsson family in stitches. “I’ll get you back, you know!”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Hans grinned and tipped the remaining water over her.
The two days to Lisbon made for dream sailing. Although low in the water from ample provisioning, Future lay well over and ran before the breeze like an excited stag, her brilliant-white sails a perfect match for the cottony wisps drifting across a sapphire sky. As far as the eye could see, glistening wave crests gave the impression of herds of buffalo roaming the plane.
Humans are born on land, so what is it about the sea? Hans reflected, imagining centuries of clippers and whalers plying this same route.
By now they had settled into an easy routine, Penny and Hans alternating turns at the helm to keep Jessica occupied with games, seamanship and schoolwork. Hans appreciated the interest Penny took in his daughter and the extra mile she always went without hesitation.
“She’s so clever,” Penny remarked as Jessica sat on deck twisting her Rubik’s Cube.
“She is. Took me twenty years to solve that thing.”
“She can solve it?”
“In under three minutes.” Hans chuckled. “You’d be too young to remember the craze.”
“There was one?”
“Yeah, pretty much every kid in school had a Rubik’s Cube, but only the brainboxes could do them. Made it look easy. The rest of us struggled to get a side the same color or resorted to taking them apart and putting them back together again. She gets it from her mom – the intelligen
ce, I mean.”
“Of course. I didn’t think she got it from you.”
“Hah! She gets her looks from me.”
“That’s obvious.” Penny prodded him in the ribs. “So her mum was pretty smart?”
“Her IQ was off the scale.”
“Really?”
“State Scrabble champion five years in a row. Could make words you didn’t know existed.”
“So that’s where Jessie gets it.”
“Look at her scuba diving. You’re an instructor, right?”
“I am.”
“How many kids do you know that are as competent as she is?”
“I’ve never met any kids her age who can dive.”
“Exactly. Makes me laugh when I see parents posting videos on YouTube of their eight-year-old, claiming they’re the youngest open-water diver ever. Jess dived off Maine at five.”
“It’s remarkable.”
“She’s always been advanced for her age – crawling, talking, reading. Problem was she got way ahead in class and started to lose interest. We had her moved up a year, and Kerry spent time in the evenings homeschooling her.”
“How did that go?”
“Really well. Kerry was good at that kinda thing – math, English, music. Hell, she could speak Spanish and German fluently.”
“Sounds like a tough act to fol—” The words tumbled out before Penny could stop them.
“No!” Hans kicked himself. “Don’t think that. Kerry was Kerry and . . . well, that’s it.”
They fell silent a moment, listening to the waves splashing against Future’s hull.
“And was JJ the same?”
“No, JJ was a plodder like his father, but uncannily pragmatic.”
“That figures.”
“They were good together. Balanced one another. But it’s been hard to . . .”
“To explain to Jessie what happened?”
Hans nodded, his jaw clenched. “She would understand death better than most adults. It’s just . . . I don’t want to put my grief onto her. Don’t wanna steal her innocence. She’s smart, but she’s still a child. Does that make sense?”
“Perfect sense. It’s why she carries a teddy.”
Hans smiled. “I’ve done my best to explain it to her. You know, without resorting to angels in heaven or a full-on science lecture.”
“You’ve done a great job, Hans. You always do. I see the way you take time to teach her things, like the history in Plymouth. Most parents just drag their kids around, overlooking the fact they’re a receptacle for knowledge.”
“Ha! You’ve had the rundown on Sir Francis Drake?”
“Queen’s favorite sailor. Big ship called a galleon. Sailed to faraway places like the jungle – and don’t get me started on nuclear submarines.”
“She’s a cracking kid.”
“She certainly is. And bereavement isn’t something you can deal with through logic, no matter how smart you are.”
“You’re right.” Hans put his arm around Penny and kissed her hair. “Say, you hungry?”
“I’m always hungry, Hans. You should know that by now.”
“Then it’s Scooby snack time! Jessie, wanna eat something?”
“I’m okay, Papa.” She concentrated on putting the colored squares in place for a fifth time.
“Got plenty of escargot, if you want some.”
“Urrrh!”
Hans went into the galley and began pulling items from the fridge, timing his forays with the roll of the yacht like a sketch in a Laurel and Hardy movie. He emerged with two baton rolls loaded with enough ingredients to stock a deli.
“Hot sauce?” He waggled the bottle in front of Penny as she set the self-steering mechanism.
“Erm?” She eyed the label “Louisiana Mega Death” and its skull-and-crossbones logo with suspicion. “I think I’ll pass.”
They sat in the cockpit working their way along the torpedo-sized sandwiches.
“You said you liked smorgasbord, Hans, but this is ridiculous!” Penny tried not to let the thick slices of chorizo, wild boar salami, chunks of goat cheese and salad sneak out of the perimeter. Having polished off the sub, she wiped her mouth with a tissue and stared out to sea.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing.” She gazed dead ahead.
“Must be something?”
“It’s that . . . I’ve never asked you what happened.” She turned to face him. “Not that I want to pry, but if you need to talk . . .”
Hans rubbed his neck and stared down at the cockpit’s wooden decking.
Penny regretted her comment, fearing she had overstepped the mark, though she need not have.
“Penny, I’ve always found it strange, almost despised the way people deal with death. I don’t know if it’s a military thing or just the result of my upbringing. My parents divorced, and a whole load of chaos came with it. But I always refused to feel sorry for myself, you know? Even homeless and wandering the streets at one point, I told myself this is life, and just get on and deal with it. When I got older and people started dying – relatives or friends I grew up with – I applied the same thinking. I guess when you understand from an early age that life ain’t fair you learn to take things in your stride. Hell, when my parents died I hardly shed a tear, even though I missed them as much as anyone.”
Penny tried to understand, but she had been raised at sea, which meant relatives were always at a distance and their deaths had little impact on her life.
“People tread on tiptoes and use expressions like ‘passed away’ and insist on wearing black to funerals and getting all pious and stuff. Everyone wants to tell you this is gonna take time and that grieving works in mysterious ways. And I just think, ‘They haven’t “passed away” – they’re dead.’ And it’s only gonna take time if you choose it to. I down a bottle of Jack and get on with it.”
“Isn’t that what shrinks call ‘detachment’?”
“Shrinks can call it what they like. I figure it’s best to see life the way it is and move on.”
“But this time it’s different, isn’t it?”
Hans slipped a hand over Penny’s. “You have a way of seeing things.”
“When you’ve crewed on as many boats as I have, you get used to weighing people up – kind of a survival mechanism. You meet some challenging people in this line of work.”
“So you see me and Jess as a challenge or just work?” Hans lightened the mood.
“I see Jess as utterly adorable, and you . . .” She paused, looking into his eyes and choosing her words carefully. “Put it this way. In all my years of sailing you were the first person I ever saw enter a marina under canvas.”
“Real Tarzan, huh?”
“To this Jane, yeah. But we’re not talking about me.”
“Oh.”
“Hans” – Penny stroked his knee – “it’s okay to grieve.”
“I know. But now when I should be grieving, when I want to grieve, I can’t.”
“Why?” Penny spoke softly.
Hans stared at the cockpit floor once more, contemplating his response. “Because I have unfinished business.”
Penny saw a look come over Hans’ face she had not seen before, dark, brooding and violent. “And is this to do with your work?”
Still looking down, Hans bit his lip and nodded.
“You feel guilty, don’t you?”
“More than you’d ever believe.”
They both fell silent. Even if Penny knew what to say, this was not the time to say it.
“I’ve done it six times!” Jessica held the completed cube aloft.
“Wow!” Penny climbed up on the cabin roof. “And what about Bear? How many times did he do it?”
“He didn’t even do it once.” Jessica shrugged, looking doleful. “He can’t really do anything.”
“Oh, sweetie.” Penny pecked her on the cheek.
“Well, how about taking Bear below and showing him how to fill out yesterday’s l
og?” Hans suggested, knowing being trusted with this task meant a lot to Jessica. “And afterwards I think we should break open that big bar of chocolate.”
“Aye aye, skippa!”
An excited Jessica ran aft, forgetting to unclip her safety line. Yanked off her feet, she crashed unceremoniously onto the deck.
“Ahh!” She pushed up onto her knees and eyed the offending restraint with disdain. “You swine!”
Penny glanced at Hans and ducked inside the cabin.
- 32 -
That evening, as Mohamed rattled on about the Brave Heart Man and the curious nature of Scottish culture, Ahmed leafed through the Swedish couple’s Complete Guide to Sailing, studying the pictures and diagrams with interest. Everything started to make sense, fitting with knowledge gained from their impromptu lessons at the harbor.
“Wee!” Mohamed grinned, appearing pleased with himself.
“What?” Ahmed looked up from the page.
“The Scot-tish, they say ‘wee’ instead of ‘small.’”
“I thought you were supposed to be improving your English.”
“But this was a Scot-tish movie.”
“Oh . . . well, next time watch an English one.”
“Okay.”
Ahmed leant over and blew out the oil lamp. “Sleep,” he ordered, lying back on the weed mattress, visions of Swedish women and enormous meatballs running through his mind.
Mohamed dreamt he was chasing Al Mohzerer through the endless rows of marijuana. Every now and then the Grower would turn to face him, brandishing a scimitar . . . the size of a pocketknife? Mohamed wielded a two-handed claymore like his hero the Brave Heart Man. Only, as opposed to the five feet of savage steel in the movie, his was the length of a scaffolding pole. Blue faced, longhaired and skirted, he cut Naseem in half repeatedly and then ran through the fields, whooping and slicing down tennis-court-sized swaths of their evil boss’s beloved crop.
All too soon the fantasy ended. Ahmed, with the self-discipline of a monk, sat up, stretched and lit the lamp. He retrieved a couple of candy bars and poked one at the little snorer.
“It’s time.”
“ Ah! Just a few more minutes.”
