Djibouti

by Elmore Leonard

  Xavier shook his head. “Unh-unh. I’m sittin here so I musta made the trip okay.”

  She thought of saying she didn’t want to fly off and leave him. But she did, dying to get off this cute fucking boat. She said, “I knew you’d make it.” He was silent now. Hurt? She said, “Xavier, tell me what happened?”

  “Nothin. I tied on to old 66 and got towed to Djibouti. How you think I made it in two days?”

  “But I’m out of touch by then.” Dara finished her cognac. “The plane lands in Djibouti and I’m met by a quiet young guy from the embassy, the car waiting on the strip, a Lincoln.”

  “Made you feel important.”

  “It did, at first. The young guy—I forgot his name, Patrick something—said he was CIA station chief there. I thought he’d start in, ask how I happened to know about terrorists. You know what he said?”

  “How was the flight?”

  “He said, ‘Is it hot enough for you?’”

  “He’s settin you up. Start slow, then blindside you.”

  “I think he expected me to start running off at the mouth, but I didn’t. I said, ‘I’m used to it by now.’ Neither of us said another word on the way. No, he said something about the embassy being air-cooled for your comfort. Didn’t they use to say that about movie theaters?”

  “Before you were born.”

  “It was the only mention of where we were going.”

  “You musta known you weren’t goin to the hotel.”

  “You’re right, he didn’t ask where I was staying. We approached the embassy, local police hanging around in front, passed through the gate and got out at the entrance. The marine post, the first one, was just inside. The marine took my passport and entered what he needed to know and handed it to the CIA station chief. The marine wanted to look in my bag but Patrick said, ‘Ms. Barr’s with me,’ and took it off my shoulder. Now we’re in the inner lobby—the whole place done in that harmless government décor. I was thinking they could get—what was her name, Billy’s yacht decorator? Anne Bonfiglio. See if she could add a ‘look’ with a bit more life to it. The next marine stepped away from his desk to hand me a visitor’s ID badge. Red with a big V in white and the words ESCORT REQUIRED. You believe it?”

  Xavier said, “They got you now.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE CIA STATION CHIEF brought Dara by elevator to the third floor and along a hallway of what must be executive offices to the one at the end, double doors open to a view of the gulf at dusk in the windows and a woman in a beige suit coming toward her smiling, telling Dara, “I can’t believe I’m actually meeting you. I love Women of Bosnia, the way you shot the men lurking about, watching like hyenas, waiting…Were you afraid filming those guys?”

  “At times, yeah, they made me nervous.”

  “Dara, I’m hoping I can help you. I’m Suzanne Schmidt, regional security officer.” She took Dara’s hand and held on to it. “I love the way you do your hair.”

  “I don’t really do it,” Dara said.

  “It shows your independence. I should have mine cut and quit getting my roots done every month. I blow it dry and by midday in this humidity and I have to go out…? My pageboy begins to go limp.” She brought Dara into her office, the CIA man and her bag no longer with them.

  “Dara, I’ve loved all of your documentaries,” Suzanne said, “but Women of Bosnia is my favorite—the way you kept your eye on the men without ever featuring them, and yet we know what they’re about, especially what they did to the women. My favorite character is Amelia. You tell her story after the men had repeatedly raped her.”

  “Months later,” Dara said.

  “Amelia explains in simple words, ‘Because I am Muslim.’ She feels indelibly soiled. ‘Because I am Muslim.’ What the conflict was all about, really. Her husband leaves and she thinks of throwing herself in front of a train.”

  It was a tram, a streetcar, but Dara didn’t interrupt.

  “The men eye you with speculation. Can we do what we want to this American alone in our country, making herself a nuisance? They’re not sure if we’ll come to your aid. Americans sometimes put themselves in a fix we’re unable to resolve.”

  “I’m not in a fix,” Dara said.

  “Well, Amelia certainly was,” Suzanne said. “In the depths of her despair thinking of killing herself. But she’s the mother of a two-year-old boy and her husband has abandoned them. Amelia’s in quite a fix, isn’t she?”

  “She finally took off her hajab,” Dara said, “brightened her hair to quite a blaze of red, remember? And managed to get on with her life.”

  “I thought it was more a shade of henna,” Suzanne said. “Anyway,” she said, “more to the point, I’d like to show you what we’ve been up to.”

  THEY SAT IN BROWN-LEATHER swivel chairs somewhat grouped around a coffee table where a laptop computer sat waiting. Suzanne turned it to face them and took the chair next to Dara’s.

  “So, for the past month you’ve been filming Somalis hijacking merchant ships. A departure from what you normally set out to document. More like the real thing?”

  “They’re all the real thing. Katrina was my one departure,” Dara said, “from what I normally shoot. I seem to be attracted to men I feel acting against their nature, showing off, getting together as thugs in Whites Only, the one about white supremacists. Or Somali fishermen enjoying themselves as pirates, and making a lot of money. But now piracy is attracting commercial interest, Hollywood,” Dara said. “Several movies about pirates are in preproduction right now. Or, if you’re interested and can afford it, you can rent a yacht for five thousand a day, seven-fifty for each AK-47 you think you’ll need, and ten bucks for a hundred rounds of ammo. You slip along the coast toward Mogadishu hoping to attract pirates. But once the shooting starts, they’ll put an RPG through your hull and you’re sunk.”

  “It’s a Russian enterprise,” Suzanne said, “operating right here in Djibouti. Entrepreneurs, you might call them, looking for a quick buck.”

  “RPGs will put the Russians out of business,” Dara said, “and the Somalis, once they begin taking lives.”

  “You sympathize with them?” Suzanne said. “The poor Somalis trying to make a living?”

  “I did,” Dara said, “until I saw a skiff flying a ‘Kill Americans’ banner. Since then I’ve been losing interest in their cause.”

  “You like the idea of putting yourself in danger.”

  “I’ve never been shot at,” Dara said. “I’ve been yelled at, cursed in different languages. Jebo te Bog, govno jedno.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “May God fuck you, you piece of shit.”

  “It sounds as though you have the accent down,” Suzanne said. “Do you always learn the language?”

  “Never more than a few words.”

  “I understand you met a number of pirates in Eyl. One of them threw a party for you?”

  “They were celebrating something else.”

  “But socializing with them—it must take nerve.”

  “At the time we had nothing against each other,” Dara said. “One of them bought his mates new wingtips at Tricker’s in London, two hundred dollars a pair.”

  “Really.”

  “They’re generous, and usually fun-loving.”

  “Until some cleric or Imam of the radical Shabaab,” Suzanne said, “begins lopping off a hand and a foot of each pirate they seize. You know the Shabaab are Wahhabi Islamists, the same sect as al Qaeda.”

  “They’d be cutting off the hand that feeds them,” Dara said. “The Shabaab are on the take.” She said, “Are we getting close to it now?”

  “We’re closing in,” Suzanne said. “I have photographs I’d like to show you. They were taken the morning after the party.” She reached toward the computer but didn’t touch it and sat back in brown leather again. “You say the party wasn’t in your honor.”

  “It turned out they were celebrating the attack on the Alabama.”
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  “Don’t tell me you were with them, cheering.”

  “I was there.”

  “I know you met a few pirates in Eyl, fairly well known, moderately wealthy. One of them had the party at his home. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of some warlord swooping down to clean him out.”

  “Warlords are also on the take.”

  “You know who I’m referring to.”

  “Yes, I do,” Dara said. She took out a cigarette and lighted it, Suzanne watching. It was the last cigarette in the pack. Suzanne didn’t say a word. There was no ashtray on the coffee table. Suzanne made no effort to get one. There might not be an ashtray in this entire building. Dara decided not to ask for one. She’d smoke her cigarette and use the empty pack, once she got an ash worth flicking into it. If this security person thinks you’re nervous, let her. She knows everything about you. Where you’ve been, what you’ve been doing. Who you know…Dara thought, If it doesn’t matter, since she’s way ahead of you, why do you sound like you’re trying to hide something?

  She said, “Is your husband in the foreign service?”

  Suzanne had the rings.

  “He’s down the road in Kenya, my counterpart.”

  “That’s why they can’t put you together?”

  “As a matter of fact we’ve both been posted to Nigeria, on the other side of Africa. We’ll be together, not counting holidays, for the first time in two years.”

  “Aren’t you anxious?”

  “Of course I am, I can’t wait.”

  “But as long as you’re here,” Dara said, “you have to keep your eye on the ball.”

  “Yes, I do,” Suzanne said, smiling for a moment, giving Dara a look that had nothing to do with African affairs, until she said, “The morning after the party”—she pressed a key on the computer—“these Toyotas left Eyl.”

  There they were on the screen, in a series of cut long shots, now seen from several points of view, the Toyotas standing on a road that would lead to the coast, Somalis with AKs waiting to board. “There’s your friend Idris Mohammed,” Suzanne said, “and his prisoners, two Qaeda operatives, secured, sacks over their heads. They were placed in separate SUVs. Do you know who they are?”

  “We think one’s American,” Dara said, “Jama Raisuli. The other one’s Qasim al Salah.”

  “They’ve taken part in several bombings,” Suzanne said, “but obviously not as martyrs. One in Riyadh killed or injured over a hundred and fifty, nine Americans murdered. They destroyed the compounds where employees live, the ones working for U.S. and British corporations. More recently Jama and Qasim were crew members on Aphrodite, an LNG tanker. That’s liquefied natural gas, extremely combustible. Ignited, I’m told, it will melt steel within a thousand feet or so.”

  “And only five ports in the U.S.,” Dara said, “equipped to offload the gas.”

  It got Suzanne’s attention. “How do you know that?”

  “Helene told me, Billy Wynn’s girlfriend. Billy has photos of wanted al Qaedas and I picked out Jama and Qasim.”

  “Does Billy know Jama’s real name?”

  “If he doesn’t I bet he could find out.”

  “Maybe. No one in the Middle East seems to know it. Run African Americans with Muslim names, you know how many hits you’d get?”

  “Billy would make a phone call and have it,” Dara said. “He has a list of people he pays. Helene says for anything you want to know. Most of them in the shipping business. When you look at my footage you’ll see Jama and Qasim on the Aphrodite, the only ones in the crew who aren’t Filipino. Billy said the two of them, turned in for the rewards, are worth over five million. Is that true?”

  “One five million, the other possibly a million.”

  “Billy said the State Department would try to weasel out of paying.”

  “I know, he told me,” Suzanne said, “but without using the term weasel. That must be your thought,” Suzanne giving Dara something of a smile. “But let’s put Billy aside for the time being, all right? I’d like to know who invited Jama and Qasim to the party.”

  Dara hesitated. She remembered asking Idris the same question and his answer, “They’re Harry’s Saudis. He invited them.”

  “Idris Mohammed,” Suzanne said, “is what he is, a pirate. I met him once. I thought he was fun, in his own way. Did Idris invite them, or was it Ari Ahmed Sheikh Bakar? The one you won’t admit you know.”

  Suzanne looked at the computer screen.

  “Those are satellite shots from our Eye in the Sky. We have coverage of just about their entire trip to Djibouti. One SUV conked out, four made it. Idris and Harry, as he’s called, brought along the Qaeda operatives who were on the LNG tanker. What I don’t understand, why you won’t admit you know Harry? You suspect him of illegal activities? Possibly selling arms to warlords?”

  Dara said, “I’ll tell you how I see it if you’ll get me an ashtray.”

  Suzanne said, “Let me have it,” and walked off taking a long drag before butting the cigarette in a planter. She returned and sat down and Dara said, “The way I see it, selling guns in the desert is another way of socializing, getting along with your neighbor, the warlord. It’s probably been going on at least a thousand years. Now Ethiopians come over to raise hell and the Shabaabs go around picking fights. Billy calls them ‘the lads.’ Billy knows the names and numbers of all the players. I won’t tell you what he calls our embassies.”

  “Bureaucracies,” Suzanne said. “Billy e-mails us from time to time. You’re right, he seems to have exceptional knowledge of what’s going on. He’s warned us about the LNG tanker. We already have it under investigation.”

  “It seems too obvious,” Dara said. “Terrorists discovered aboard a highly combustible tanker? One of them a well-known pyromaniac with five million on his head? But if the ship’s a decoy, what’s Qasim doing on it?”

  “What I’m enormously curious about,” Suzanne said, “is who invited the al Qaedas to the party.”

  “Harry,” Dara said.

  “Why were you trying to protect him?”

  “I’m like you,” Dara said, getting a girl-to-girl feeling, “I’m not a hundred percent sure about Harry. But, if he’s turning in al Qaedas he deserves the reward.”

  “But you don’t trust him.”

  “I think he’s more Brit than Saudi.”

  “His mother’s English, isn’t she?”

  “I hope I’m entirely wrong about Harry, he’s a good guy and really not that much of a snob, and I’ll be sorry I told you.” Dara said, “But if the ship’s a decoy, because it’s so fucking obvious and likely to be stopped, what happens to Qasim and Jama? I mean even if they hadn’t been snatched by the Gold Dust Twins.”

  Suzanne gave her a look but didn’t interrupt.

  “They’d be arrested and go to prison. I’ve been thinking about it,” Dara said. “Why would a terrorist like Qasim, one of their heroes, agree to a phony scheme and risk going to prison? He’s one of bin Laden’s stars.”

  Suzanne said, “They didn’t tell him the ship was possibly a decoy.”

  “Yeah, but why not? If he knew, he wouldn’t have joined the crew.”

  “Unless he’s tired of it,” Suzanne said.

  “A guy like that, I think he’d kill himself before he’d risk getting locked up.”

  “I’m not sure of that,” Suzanne said.

  “I’ve talked to enough Arabs—it seems like half my life. They’ll take the virgins before prison any day,” Dara said. “You know where they are now, the caravan of Toyotas?”

  Suzanne touched her computer to show more satellite shots of the SUVs on the road in their own dust, evening now.

  “At sundown,” Suzanne said, “they were less than a hundred miles from Djibouti. A few minutes later I’m told we lost them.”

  “Did you find any black Toyota SUVs in Djibouti?”

  “You’re joking, aren’t you?” Suzanne said, going to her desk. She picked up a printout of a telephone recor
ding. “They actually called. One of them did. He asked if Rewards for Justice was still offered and I told him it was.” She looked at the printout. “The caller said, ‘My dear, if I cannot trust you’”—Suzanne hinting at an African speaking English—“‘we will take these Qaedas into the desert and bury them.’ I said, ‘Come in and show us who you have.’ I told him we’d already paid out thirty million in rewards.”

  Dara said, “That isn’t much if some guys are worth twenty-five.”

  “You’d think they’d be breaking down the door,” Suzanne said. “Try to get them to come in and rat out someone they know. It’s not easy.”

  Dara said, “They didn’t come in, did they?”

  “Or phone,” Suzanne said. “We put in a request to National Police, see if they can locate them. They might or might not. You never know whose side they’re on. We can’t nose around ourselves, search apartments in someone else’s country. We do have people keeping their eyes open.”

  “Billy’s right, you have to go by the book,” Dara said. “I’ll find them.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  BEFORE HE WAS JAMA Raisuli or Jama al Amriki he was James Russell, pronounced Russell: picked up twice on suspicion of armed robbery and released; arrested in Miami Beach with controlled substances and sent to the Stockade to await a court date. James said to the lawyer appointed for him, “Do I look like a drug dealer to you? I’m a college student happen to have some blow on me I’m picked up, some weed for my depressed state of mind. I don’t sell my medications.”

  The federal prosecutor asked James’s lawyer, “What’d he have, a few ounces?”

  The lawyer said, “A pound or so of weed. The boy has a smart mouth. I’ll plead him on possession, you offer us three to five and we’ll take it, skip the trial.”

  This was how James Russell came to Coleman FCI in the middle of inland Florida to hang with Muslims, a means of surviving in here, twenty years old doing his first fall. He told the Muslims he was a member of the Nation of Islam, having seen the movie Malcolm X and remembered how the brothers addressed one another. Have some serious Muslims around him and not get used by skinheads for their immoral purposes. Jamming a broom handle up his butt.