by Chris Simms
His mind went back to an incident on their second tour. Their patrol had walked into an ambush, a tripwire triggering an explosion that sent shards of shrapnel slicing through the air, one of which took off half of Marat’s left ear. Then came the fire-fight. With all their comrades dead or unable to fight back, the two of them had held off the advancing soldiers long enough for helicopter support to arrive.
He reached into a pocket and flicked a credit-card-sized piece of plastic on the table. On it was a small photo of his face. ‘We’ve all been given these identity cards. Soon, our stories will be discovered. If they’re still sitting in those flats, they’ll be arrested and taken to a detention centre. Marat’s got a wife and two kids back in Russia. I’ve bounced the little things on my knee, read them stories. Andriy has a fiancée waiting for him back in St Petersburg. They’re your responsibility.’
Mykosowski placed both palms on the table, took a deep breath and lifted the tips of his fingers a fraction. ‘OK. When they ring, I’ll get their locations and you can take some cash to them.’ He thought for a moment. ‘How much do they know?’
‘About the ship?’
‘Yes.’
‘They were aware the container we were guarding was for America.’
‘They don’t know what was inside?’
Valeri thought about the final, desperate, days at sea before the fishing trawler found them. Lolling in the heat, thirst driving them mad, his colleagues demanding to know why the ship didn’t turn back. Why they had been left to die. I shouldn’t have been weak, he thought. I shouldn’t have told them what was in that container. He shook his head. ‘Of course not,’ he lied. ‘Where is the Lesya now, by the way?’
Mykosowski joggled his mouse then studied the screen. ‘It cleared the Channel the day before yesterday. It’s now a couple of hundred miles out in the Atlantic.’
‘Only yesterday morning?’
‘That storm caused a lot of damage. It had to wait a week for new parts for the radar system. After Felixstowe it made a delivery to Rotterdam. That’s done and now it’s headed for America.’
Valeri could hardly believe his ears. ‘You accepted a delivery to Rotterdam? That wasn’t on the itinerary.’
‘It’s a tramp ship. We get an opportunity to take on freight, we take on freight.’
‘And there were no questions asked at the two ports?’
‘What? About missing crew?’
Valeri nodded.
‘The regular crew are all on-board. You and your team weren’t even officially on that ship, remember?’
‘What about missing containers?’
Mykosowski’s belly shook as he chuckled. ‘Valeri, do you know how many shipping containers are lost at sea every month? Hundreds? Thousands? Who knows? Customs officials only care that the containers being offloaded in their port have the necessary paperwork. They don’t check ship manifests. That’s my responsibility.’
Valeri crossed his arms. ‘That cargo – which was the whole point of the voyage – is out in the Atlantic without my team to guard it.’
‘Valeri, don’t worry. Next stop is Baltimore. We unload the container there and our part in this is over.’
In fact, Valeri thought, once that cargo hits American soil, the entire mission will be over and we all get paid. The people so anxiously waiting will finally have what they want. Valeri’s eyes dropped to the floor, an uncomfortable feeling creeping over him as he considered what they’d do with their precious delivery. It’s not my concern, he told himself. It’s nothing to do with me. He looked up at Mykosowski. ‘How long until it reaches Baltimore?’
The other man tilted his head to the side. ‘Eight days, at most.’
Eight days. Valeri prayed nothing else could go wrong in that short amount of time. ‘And the master knows what’s in the container?’
‘Kaddouri? He follows whatever orders I give him. And his orders are to go nowhere near the thing.’
Valeri glanced at Mykosowski. The ship’s owner was studying his screen once again. You have no idea, he thought, about the people in America you’re dealing with. The power they wield. He wanted to jump up and tell Mykosowski that the fact they were on the other side of the Atlantic from them meant nothing. These were people who could reach out anywhere in the world and make other people disappear. Christ knew they did it often enough. Instead, he reached for his coat, feeling the Bounty bar in his side pocket. Sweets, chocolate, junk food. When will my cravings for the stuff pass? ‘OK. Let me know as soon as all my team have called in.’
Once outside, he took the walkway that led alongside the Thames. The riverside restaurants and cafes were busy, people chatting at tables placed out in the evening sun. He looked at the plates of food. Fish and chips, earthenware pots of unshelled prawns, steaks sizzling on platters. He thought about their last desperate days at sea and what they’d finally resorted to. Queasiness stirred in his gut.
Off to his left, a small wooden jetty stretched above the exposed gravel and rock which bordered the greyish-brown water. He paced the battered planks, stopping at the jetty’s end to gaze across the river at the Houses of Parliament.
His mind went to the slow drag of days before the lifeboat he and his team were on had finally been separated from the raft carrying the last two refugees. The woman on it was still alive, he was sure. Such a tiny thing, he thought. Those deep-brown, almond-shaped eyes. Eyelashes so thick she seemed to be permanently wearing mascara or eye liner or whatever it was women did to arm themselves with a glance that could make a man’s mouth go dry. Yet the femininity of her eyes was balanced by the squareness of her jaw and the set of her lips – they lent her a determined look. Defiant, even. The fact she was still clinging to life when so many others on the raft had died didn’t surprise him.
What was her name? Amira, that was it. Amira Jasim. She never let go of her little plastic bag with the notebook and pen sealed inside. Every few hours she would take it out then scribble away, writing God knew what. Ripping the pages out, ramming the little notes into those cursed ducks and dropping the things back with the masses that floated alongside them. After eight days at sea, she was unable to stand. But still she continued to write. Surely, he told himself, she couldn’t have survived for much longer after their lifeboat and her raft had drifted apart.
He leaned on the wooden rail to watch the river. A squat cruiser was making its way towards Tower Bridge. Crowded beneath the curved canopy on its upper deck was a mass of tourists clutching electronic devices to their faces. Phones, cameras, camcorders. Flashes continually lit up the inside of the glass. Slowly, he turned the mobile Mykosowski had given him over in his hand, tracking the river’s currents as they curled and slid away before him.
After the huge wave had swept all of them overboard, they’d survived two more nights of storms. During that time, they’d prayed for the ocean to calm. Then they’d got what they wished for: days spent motionless on its flat surface, slowly baking under the sun, desperate for movement of any kind. A ruffling of the water, a murmur of breeze, even a cloud floating across the sky.
He thought about the freight ship, now halfway across the Atlantic and him standing on a jetty, unable to watch over the cargo that was his duty to guard. And he wondered if, by breaking his promise to the people in America of running a clean ship, Mykosowski had signed a death warrant for not only himself, but everyone with any knowledge of what lay below the deck of the Lesya.
‘Give me the name of this website.’ Mykosowski sat up, mobile phone pressed against a cheek that carried the imprint of a sofa cushion. In the corner of his apartment the live feed to a porn shoot somewhere in Albania still filled the grotesquely sized plasma screen. Now, two young girls were being filmed. They were kneeling between a seated man’s legs, guzzling away as if their lives depended on it. Which, judging from their ages and the types of tattoo visible on the man’s lower arms, it probably did.
Realising he must have fallen asleep within seconds of logging on
the previous night, Mykosowski lifted the remote and cut the connection. Then he dragged his laptop towards him across the coffee table, one shoulder hunched, phone now wedged against his flabby jaw. After typing in a couple of words, he growled, ‘Got it,’ staring at the screen as he hung up. He read through the story slowly and thought for a few moments. God, this wasn’t
happening. When he rang Valeri’s number, there was a crystal glass half-full of cognac before him. As the phone started to ring, he took a large sip. ‘Valeri, where are you now?’
‘Waiting for the train. I’ll be back in Manchester late morning.’
Mykosowski nodded. The three men in Valeri’s team had all called in the previous evening. He’d taken their addresses and passed them on to Valeri, giving him instructions to supply each one with enough money to disappear. ‘I think we have a problem. My client who lost his consignment of ducks. He’s been searching about on the internet and came across a news story. A woman, walking her dog on a beach in somewhere called Minehead. She says she found some yellow ducks washed up on the sand. In one of them was a note.’
‘A note?’
‘Yes, she removed the plug in the base of the duck. There was a note inside.’
‘What did it say?’
Mykosowski ran the back of a thumbnail down his heavy cheek. ‘I wouldn’t believe it was real, but for one thing.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll read it to you.’
Once he was finished, he swivelled in his chair to look at the dead grey TV screen. '“The man with the throat scars is a naval soldier?” Valeri, I think it is you this man is describing.’ All he could hear was background noise of the station. ‘Valeri, are you there?’
‘It is a woman, not a man.’
Mykosowski cocked his head to one side. ‘Explain.’
‘She was scribbling in this little book the whole time. Tearing out the pages and sealing them inside those ducks.’
‘How many notes?’
‘A lot.’
‘And this woman. She was from inside one of the containers?’
‘That’s right. Iraqi woman, called Amira. Early twenties. She spoke good English.’
Mykosowski raised his chin, eyes scanning the immense painting of a white stallion on the far wall of his apartment. A few tiny beads of sweat now showed on his brow. ‘What happened to this woman?’
‘I don’t know. She was on the raft with the refugees. I was in the lifeboat with my team. We became separated.’
‘Could she have survived?’
‘I doubt it. She was inches from death when the wind blew us away from the raft.’
‘But you can’t be sure.’ Mykosowski traced a finger down the side of his laptop. ‘You know, if more of the messages this woman wrote are found, we are vulnerable. The Lesya is still seven days from the American coast. What if you mentioned the name of the ship and she heard it? What if that’s mentioned in a note?’
Valeri thought of the other things he had talked about with Marat, Yegor and Andriy as they aimlessly drifted for day after day. Thank God we spoke in Russian. Even if our words carried to her across the water, she couldn’t have understood. ‘We didn’t,’ he lied. ‘I’m almost certain of that.’
‘Almost? And you said there are more of these notes?’
‘Yes. But thousands of ducks poured from the ship when the containers broke open. Who knows if any more carrying notes will make it to shore? What about the ducks themselves? Could they be traced back to the Lesya?’
Mykosowski reached for his cognac and took another sip. ‘No. They were listed on the manifest as bathroom items, nothing more specific than that.’
‘What about the person who had paid you to ship them – the one who found this story?’
‘He won’t talk, I can assure you of that.’ He tapped a nail against the rim of his glass. ‘But this woman? What was her name?’
‘Amira Jasim.’
‘Amira Jasim? I think you should check the hospital you were taken to. See if she also was taken there. And if she was, deal with her.’
‘OK.’
‘And we need to talk about your team. They worry me. If the authorities somehow make the link, I’m afraid they might talk.’
‘I’m on my way to see them right now. Once they have cash, they’ll just vanish.’
‘And if they’re picked up as they try to leave the country?’
‘You could make sure they get out safely. On one of your ships.’
‘It’s not that easy. Not in the ports of this country. Valeri, I think they’ll have to be dealt with, too.’ The line remained silent. ‘They could put the delivery of the container at risk. Valeri, you know it’s the only way.’
Four
Jon’s eyes travelled slowly up the pillar, his head starting to tilt back as he took in the white girders and frames of the glass atrium high above him. Somewhere below, a series of electronic beeps echoed as a person passed through the security gates inside the entrance to the Crown Court.
He heard coins and keys rattle in a plastic tray, the murmur of the guards’ voices, then the click of heels on the tiled floor of the hall. He glanced over the balcony. A young female solicitor, walking quickly towards the rear of the building, hair in a tight ponytail. They always wear their hair in tight ponytails, he thought, as she passed from sight.
Turning back, he examined the carpet at his feet. Little circles of cream-coloured dots floated on a sea of turquoise fabric. They stretched away in perfect diagonal lines to the chunky wooden doors leading through to courts seven and eight.
‘This is a joke,’ he sighed, glancing down at his watch. Two hours sat here waiting for the court doors to open and the usher to call us in. He tried to search for a positive. At least the rest of their workload was relatively clear: they would surely be part of the investigation into who had bludgeoned, burned, stabbed or shot the next corpse to show up in the city.
Jon glanced across at his partner, taking in his trendily messed- up hair and well-proportioned profile. Rick’s eyes were glued to his mobile, thumb moving over the scroll button. Jon sighed again. Bloody things were destroying the art of conversation. Holly would be wanting one soon. ‘What are you looking at, anyway?’
‘Scanning surf reports. Looking good down in Devon for next week.’
Jon reflected for a moment on Rick’s new hobby. ‘Oh yeah, you’ve got holiday booked, haven’t you?’
‘Yup – from Saturday. Three days’ worth. We can’t decide between the West Country or somewhere closer. We’ve got Zak – so it’ll probably be somewhere closer.’
Zak, thought Jon. The eight-month-old infant created from sperm Rick had donated to a lesbian couple.
‘Seen this?’ Rick was holding his mobile out.
Jon squinted, trying to make sense of the dense type packing the screen. ‘What?’
‘Newspaper article. Found it among the surf reports in the North Devon Messenger. These ducks have started getting washed up along the Bristol Channel, probably fallen off a container ship somewhere out in the Atlantic.’
‘And?’
‘A woman walking her dog along the beach at Minehead found a note in one. The Messenger got hold of it and they’ve printed the thing word for word.’
‘What does it say?’
‘It’s probably all a hoax, but here, I’ll read it you.’ Rick held the screen a little closer to his face.
L E T T E R T H R E E
Nothing to eat and no rest for last night and all this day. Warm sun for three hours and our clothes are drier. Many look to the horizon, but still the ship has not been seen.
Others have been busy, making good the raft and gathering all possible from the sea around us. A man from the crew with many scars on his throat thought to gather all the ducks close to us and push them in the space between the top and bottom of the pallets. The raft is now higher, though water still reaches to our ankles, so we cannot sit.
Another man, Ali, who is also from B
aghdad, swum out to bring back many more of the children’s ropes. He and the man with throat scars have used some to secure the raft more firmly. Other ropes they have tied to the edges of the raft. Everyone now can hold a rope and so people do not fall when the raft is made to move suddenly by the sea.
I am ashamed for when I need the toilet. All the women help to hide each other when it must be done.
This afternoon two plastic drums were recovered, one containing many packets of dates. The other was empty.
The man with the throat scars is a naval soldier? He has given each of us a number. There are on the raft twenty-one of us. Unlike in the containers, people talk to each other now.
Six of us are from Iraq. Myself, Ali and two men, Khadom and Qais are all from Baghdad. Two women – Sura and Zainab – are from Basra whose husbands were trapped in the container that sank. There is a Kurdish woman, Sheren, and her boy of ten years, Jîno. His father also did not survive the fall when the wave washed us from the ship. Qais asked why I fled from Iraq alone. I dared not tell the truth – even here, I fear it could cost me my life.
The two men who first built the raft are Mehdi and Parviz. They are brothers from Iran. Seven are from maybe China, five men who stay together and an older couple. The man has a beard and wears a white headcap. His wife has a headscarf of bright red. They do not speak the same language as the five men. They have been passing little sweets to Jîno.
There are three men from Pakistan and last person is the crewman. He asked that everyone place their food and drink in the empty drum. Eventually we all agreed. The crewman then called each number out and every person received three biscuits, eight dates and a small amount to drink.
Sometimes today, while working to save ourselves, I felt hope. A ship must surely pass close by soon. But now I see only waves, endless in every direction. It is getting dark and the wind is growing stronger again. Our lives are no more than candles, flickering.
