by Henry Porter
The Turkish coast lay no more than ten miles away, clouded by haze, which Samson realised was caused by the wind scooping spray from the waves. As he smoked and thought about the camp and Anastasia’s work, his gaze came to rest on a few tiny strips of orange out to sea. He fetched a small pair of binoculars from the side pocket of his rucksack. Three long rubber dinghies loaded with people in orange life jackets were moving at an agonisingly slow speed through the waves. Each disappeared in turn as it entered the trough of a wave.
He became aware that one of his two phones – the encrypted set – was vibrating in the back pocket of his jeans. He pulled it out, entered the code with his thumb and answered.
‘We’re just looking at the stuff you sent over,’ said Chris Okiri. ‘The man says he wants much more on what the boy saw and heard in the camp. Take her through what he told her and get her to flesh it out. The man points out that she seems to have written the word Stut before the word Germany. There are one or two mistakes in the email and he wonders whether she meant to write Stuttgart. If the boy is trying to reach a relation in Stuttgart, the German authorities may be able to work out who that is and get a family name then we may be able to track him back to the Turkish camp.’
‘I’m seeing her later,’ he said. He watched as two large motorboats approached the dinghies.
‘You there?’ asked Okiri.
‘Yes . . . As it happens, I’m watching a rescue of refugees from my balcony.’
‘Right,’ said Okiri, plainly uninterested.
‘The point, dear Chris, is that more migrants are coming every day and they’ll all soon be on that road. Where’s McLennan?’ He put the binoculars down, reached for the cigarette that had gone out in the ashtray and relit it.
‘McLennan’s wife is in the hospital, so it’s just you at the moment. We’ve told the French, Germans and several Balkan governments about the boy. The trouble is that we have so little information it’s hard to really interest them right now. We need everything you can get from that woman. Hey, by the way, I love that story about his rescue.’
‘Yes,’ Samson said, and hung up. He raised the binoculars and stood for a few minutes watching the rescue operation. Eventually one of the craft was taken in tow and the people from the other two scrambled, or were lifted, onto the larger of the two motorboats.
He napped for half an hour then walked along the harbour in the late afternoon light. Recently arrived migrants were occupying every available bench and patch of grass, while the town’s population continued as if the strangers weren’t there. The atmosphere seemed harmonious enough, though Samson had learned from the hotel reception that it had been anything but in the summer, when the migrants were sleeping and cooking and washing – as best they could – in all the public spaces in the centre of town. Things had settled down since then. Restaurants and cafés were now doing a brisk trade serving the better-off refugees – those that had come on clapped-out launches and motor yachts, rather than the big rubber inflatables.
Young men were everywhere. Samson learned to recognise those who had freshly waded ashore by the dried saltwater tidemark on their jeans. At a food station, beneath the shade of large umbrella pines, just beyond the port, he chatted to those waiting and counted a dozen different nationalities – men from as far away as Bangladesh, Eritrea, Mali and Morocco. He offered them cigarettes and found out which way they planned to enter the European Union Schengen area. On the side of a caravan he read advice – provided in English, Arabic and Urdu – about the countries the young men would be travelling through. There was one particular warning: ‘Bulgaria is very difficult, with a lot of walking through mountains and forests. Independent reports of police beating, robbers and many bad dogs.’
He took pictures of the notices with his phone to capture the websites that were listed. New routes would first appear on these sites, together with emerging hazards and other news. He wondered if it might even be possible to use one of them to communicate an offer of safe passage to the boy.
As dusk fell, he walked back into the centre by a different route, and came across a store that had once sold sun cream, towels and beach mats, but was now mostly stocked with waterproof gear, rucksacks, tents and warm clothing. He bought himself a torch, hat, gloves and anorak to wear over his battered leather jacket. It amused him that the female assistant took him for a migrant. ‘If you’re going north you’ll need these,’ she said, handing him three Freytag & Berndt maps covering Macedonia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. ‘They cost much but they’re good.’
He paid her and took the maps, then asked if she could remember a young boy with light eyes and good English visiting the store in the last few days. She called into the back room and a man with glasses propped on his forehead appeared with an open newspaper in his hands. He spoke English, too. Yes, he remembered the boy because of his polite and intelligent manner. It was two days ago – around seven in the evening – and he had bought everything he needed and had shown particular care in choosing the items.
‘You are certain it was two days ago?’ asked Samson.
‘Yes,’ said the storekeeper. ‘I remember that he went to the boat – the boat was leaving that evening.’
Anastasia Christakos must have got the sailing dates confused – she was, after all, some way from the port. ‘So, the Blue Star went two nights ago, not three?’
‘Yes, there’s one every other night. Another one for refugees sails this evening.’
‘The boy had money?’
‘Yes, euros, and he bargained with me.’ The man searched his mind for a phrase. ‘He has something this kid.’ He looked at his assistant and said something in Greek.
‘Self-possession,’ said the assistant.
The storeowner examined him. ‘What do you want with this boy?’
‘I believe he’s in danger. We’re trying to find him,’ said Samson, gesturing to the bags of equipment at his feet.
‘It’s possible that I may be able to help you. The boy could not afford the maps, so I allowed him to take photographs.’
‘With a phone?’
‘Yes, they all have phones.’ He then showed Samson on the maps he’d just purchased what sections the boy had photographed. ‘He’s smart, this kid. It means he has the map even when there is no Internet.’
Samson made some notes on his set of maps and ringed the areas that the boy had photographed. He thanked the man and his assistant and set off to the ferry terminal, where a Blue Star ship had backed into the dock and was now disgorging trucks from its stern. Night had fallen. There were hundreds of people standing or sitting in family groups on the quayside, with all their possessions piled together. Except for the tractors removing containers from the bowels of the ship, there was very little noise in the terminal. There was a kind of hushed reverence for the great vessel that would set these people on the European mainland the next morning.
He wandered over to a group of older men who were watching a Greek fisherman hand-lining for small oval fish, sat down on the sea wall and wrote an encrypted email to Fell and O’Neill, the communications specialist. The boy has a phone. May have been bought on Lesbos in the last few days because it seems unlikely that phone would have survived his raft going down. The provider could be Junophon. If you can get details of numbers sold in the last few days, we may be able to run checks on calls made to Turkey. I think he has papers that he hasn’t showed anyone – maybe a Syrian passport. Also see if you can get access to registration records of the Lesbos camp. Maybe the bad guys show up in them.
An email returned from Fell. We’re on it!
He watched the scene for a while then sauntered over to a camper van run by Médecins Sans Frontières and started speaking in Arabic to the young man he’d seen marshalling the line of people waiting for attention. The row of white plastic chairs was now empty and the man was at a loose end.
He to
ld the man that he was doing some research for Al Jazeera. After a short time he discovered that it was possible to buy a ticket for the ferry on the black market without the documents that confirmed refugee status, and it wasn’t unknown for people to board without a ticket. The authorities weren’t overly diligent because they were eager to get people off the island as quickly as possible.
He emailed SIS with the news that the boy had almost certainly landed in Piraeus just thirty-six hours before. Given the delays on the bus service and trains to the north, he might still be in Athens.
*
Later, he found Anastasia in a boisterous group of aid workers in the Bar Liberty. She detached herself from the party when she spotted him and they went to a table in the smoking section outside, where she demurely lit a cigarette, as if it were her very first time. They ordered food and Samson asked about the two men who had come into the office.
‘Oh, yeah – those guys. They’re always trying to get access to the boys for religious instruction. And you know what? The kids really don’t want it. They are stressed as it is – we protect them from more pressure.’
‘Where are those men from?’
‘I don’t know – somewhere in the UK, maybe Leeds. They’re a bit creepy. And they hang around a lot. I found them in the office the other day on their own, which I didn’t like, and I asked them to leave. I just didn’t want to talk in front of them.’
‘If these men come asking about him, could you let me know? And their names would be helpful.’
She nodded. ‘OK.’
He brought the copy of her email up on his phone and looked around to make sure they were out of earshot of the other customers. ‘Would you mind if I read this to you and asked a few questions? It’s obviously important that I get this right in my mind – I mean exactly what the boy told you.’
She picked up her drink. ‘Of course, be my guest. Remember I wrote this in a rush.’
‘Maybe we could talk a bit about the detail?’
‘Sure,’ she said, then blew a stream of smoke from a pout.
‘Okay, so, the relevant part is this: “After he was returned to our charge, I talked to the boy about why he escaped and he told me that he had to save his own life. He said that he saw two men here on Lesbos who were with him in a refugee camp in Turkey (which he refuses to identify) and that he was sure they were going to kill him. I asked him why they would do that and he replied that he recognised them from the mass killing in his village in northern Syria and that he was sure they were the same men. He told me he overheard conversations between the men while they were speaking of an attack in Europe.”’ Samson stopped as a waiter placed several small meze dishes on the table and then asked, ‘Shall we just talk about this bit?’
She nodded and took some pitta bread.
‘Firstly, did he tell you how he recognised these men? We have reports of massacres and mostly these men wear masks.’
‘He recognised the voice of one of the men – it is a strange voice and then he recognised the others from their mannerisms and also their voices. I am sure he said that. He seemed so sure.’
‘Anything else?’
‘When they were alone they called each other by names he recognised. He didn’t tell me the names.’
‘How did he and his family escape the killings? How were they allowed to witness this crime with impunity?’
‘Maybe it was because they were Muslim. He mentioned that his father had been tortured by the regime, but he did not use that word, he used the word mistreated. He said that these men killed only Christians. He was rather vague about all this – I got the feeling he wasn’t telling me everything he knew, or was making up details as they came to him.’
‘But the vital part of all this is that he recognised these men in the camp. Is that right?
‘This is what he said, yes.’
‘So how come this boy then learns of their plans to carry out an attack? It seems improbable.’
Anastasia frowned. ‘I know, and this is why I did not believe him at first. I believe he said he was spying on them and maybe they had tried to groom him into their ways. Maybe they were recruiting him and he had gone along with that and spied on them. The story was complicated and I didn’t follow all the details because at that moment I was sceptical.’
‘Do you think that in fact he may have imagined it all? That is surely a possibility. If he had spied on them while being groomed, it would require a lot of courage and a cool temperament. Does he have those qualities?’
‘Yes. He saved that baby and he escaped twice from detention. I think he’s a very brave kid and I also think he could be quite ruthless and dishonest. He may have stolen one or two items when he was in the camp – a knife that had been taken by one of the guards from a kid. I think he stole that from my desk.’
‘A knife?’
‘Yes, I saw him playing with it. I told him to put it down. I never saw it again.’
Samson asked her about the word Stut in the email. It had turned out that she had in fact written Stuttgart, but then wasn’t sure whether the boy had definitely told her that he was heading for the German city and she had failed to delete all of the word before sending the email.
‘So when did he tell you this?’
‘It was in our second one-to-one session, when I was trying to get him to talk about the trauma of the people from his boat being drowned. He wouldn’t open up. He said that he was protected and that the same mysterious force would get him all the way to Germany. That is when I thought he mentioned Stuttgart once, but I can’t be sure, which is maybe why I half-deleted it.’
‘Did he tell you anything about the route he planned?
‘He said nothing about that.’
‘Did he own a phone?’
‘Not sure – we don’t search the kids. Their private possessions are exactly that. His stuff was all drenched, but most people take precautions with a phone because it’s the most important thing in their life and they need them on the way over so they can call help – the smugglers give them numbers. They wrap phones in several plastic bags.’
‘Did he have money?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did he form a relationship with anyone – people he could make the journey with?’
‘He was like a celebrity in the camp – the story about the dolphin and the baby. Maybe he made some friends, made contacts. Yes, a lot of people came to see him when they heard his story, because everyone is bored in the camp and they like to be distracted. I don’t know if he had a particular friend.’
‘What was the nature of your treatment, your therapy?’
‘These boys have a lot of responsibility on their shoulders, because each one is hoping to get asylum and bring their families to Europe. He left his family behind in a camp in Turkey. Imagine that! The only way these kids can handle that pressure is by a kind of reality distortion. You have to prick that optimism. I told this boy, there are evil people out there – paedophiles, people traffickers, murderers, corrupt police, criminal gangs and robbers. Winter’s coming and people will die of cold on that road. I told him, you go out there alone and you could wind up frozen to death or murdered. You have to say these hard truths to them.’
Samson got up. ‘I need to tell my people what you have told me. Can I get you another drink while you wait?’
After he had brought Sonia Fell up to date, he went back and they ate. He had had almost nothing to eat for twenty-four hours and began to feel a lot better and ordered more beer. He liked Anastasia and admired her lack of sentimentality and self-importance. He could see why people opened up to her, and he admitted to himself that he was a little sorry to be leaving the island so soon. They talked about what Europe could do about the migrant crisis and the psychologist concluded rather bitterly that whatever happened, it would always fall to the Greek islands to deal wi
th the influx.
‘They are drowning in our seas, crawling up our beaches, and that isn’t going to stop soon,’ she said. ‘Just because Europe has suddenly decided that these people are not wanted doesn’t mean they aren’t going to give up getting on those little rafts. They have nothing to lose – there’s nothing where they come from. They look at the Internet and they see kids their age with money and girls and freedom and they think why I can’t I have that? It’s not just about war – it’s about inequality. You try having absolutely nothing . . .’
‘I have once,’ he said. ‘My family were refugees. I was in that boy’s position.’ This visibly surprised her and she was about to respond but he moved quickly on. ‘From your talks with the boy did you get any sense of his background? Is there anything I can use?’
‘Yes, I drew some vague conclusions. I felt he was maybe the eldest child because of his sense of responsibility, and maybe he was brought up with sisters rather than with other boys. He interacted better with women and girls than with males. He could be a little awkward with boys of his own age, perhaps because he’s so intelligent and finds them dull, but maybe it’s because he wasn’t used to boys. He’s solitary and self-sufficient – most of the time he was in the facility he sat in a chair by the gate looking intently around him, or reading. A person gave us a load of books in English and he found a science book – I think it was about physics – and he liked that a lot.’
‘Sounds like he’ll be an interesting adult,’ said Samson absently.
‘That’s exactly what the director of the documentary said.’
‘What documentary was that?’ he fired back.
‘There was a French documentary crew here. They were making a series for Canal Plus. We gave them full cooperation. It’s about child migrants – kids travelling on their own.’
‘They filmed your work?’
‘Yes, and many other things, as well. They were at the camp for five days.’
‘Did they film this boy?’
‘Maybe, I don’t know . . . Yes, they probably did.’
