Firefly

by Henry Porter

  ‘Where’s the crew now? Are they still on the island?’

  ‘No, they’re in Athens filming. I know they’ll be there for four days. Why are you so interested?’

  ‘You just said they may have filmed the boy – we need a picture of him.’

  She put her hand to her mouth. ‘How stupid of me – I didn’t think of that.’

  She fished in her bag for her wallet, from which she plucked the card of Jean-Jacques Pinto, the bright new star in French documentary-making. Samson had seen a full-length feature by Pinto about the banlieues of Paris earlier in the year.

  ‘Do you know him well enough to call and ask him to see me tomorrow in Athens?’

  ‘Of course.’ She smiled and took out her phone.

  ‘Don’t say anything about the boy. Just ask Pinto if he can spare the time to see me. Say it’s important and I will explain when I see him. Tell him I work in a Europe-wide security operation,’ he replied. ‘You know the sort of thing.’

  She dialled the number, still smiling.

  Anastasia deployed all her charm on Pinto and he agreed to meet Samson the next day, though he was wary. All that was left for Samson was to catch the early flight to Athens, and Anastasia said she could arrange it, even though the flight was usually full. She made another call and told him he had a ninety per cent chance of a seat if she was with him at the airport by six, for which reason she suggested he check out of his hotel that night and stay with her in the house she shared with two aid workers on the coast road.

  Half an hour later they arrived at the villa. The place had once been a desirable holiday home but now it looked onto one of the main landing beaches for migrant dinghies. As they swung into the drive their headlights picked out a pile of discarded life jackets.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, as he let his things down softly in the hallway. ‘The others are asleep. I think we should go to my room.’ When the door was closed behind them, she turned to him with a perfectly charming smile ‘You can sleep on the bed, but that is all.’

  ‘That’s fine with me,’ he replied. ‘Feels like I haven’t slept for a week.’

  But instead of sleeping they talked for another hour, staring up at the fan in the half-light and talking about their lives. ‘How do you speak Arabic so well?’ she asked. ‘Did you learn it for your job?’

  ‘It’s my first language,’ replied Samson. ‘I was born in Lebanon – but we had to leave and I was brought up with my sister in London after ’85.’

  ‘But Samson is an English name, no?’

  ‘It’s anglicised from the Arabic name Shamshun. That was my father’s first name. Actually my family name is Malouf. We dropped it when we went to England.’

  ‘You had to leave Lebanon?’

  ‘Yes, it was during the war. I was eight or nine, I forget. We lost everything and went to England, where my mother set up a famously good restaurant in the West End of London.’

  ‘And what about your father?’

  ‘He died early. He was the archetypal Levantine trader. He needed the Mediterranean. He could have lived at any time in the last two thousand years and he’d have made a living doing exactly the same thing – buying and selling. But he got us out, and somehow found the money to set up a home in London.’

  ‘But you’re not a trader – you find people,’ she said, turning to him so that he could feel the breath of her words on his cheek. ‘What does that actually mean?’

  ‘It’s not my profession; it’s just something that’s developed over the last couple of years. I work for a company that sometimes helps clients find people.’

  ‘Who have you found recently?’

  ‘We lost track of the person I spent most of the year trying to find. She vanished.’

  ‘Was it someone you knew?

  ‘No, I didn’t know her. She was doctor – a brilliant one, by all accounts. I was working for her brother.’

  She waited a couple of beats. ‘Do you have a partner – someone special in your life?’

  ‘No,’ he said at length, ‘no one special, but that’s not for want of trying.’ He laughed.

  ‘You find people but no one for yourself – is that it?’

  ‘Look, I should sleep,’ he murmured.

  They fell silent, but it was a while before Samson stopped thinking about Aysel Hisami. Just before he dropped off he hurried through that old reel from his childhood in the camp, where his family had been for over a year before his fast-talking, handsome father got them out.

  Next morning, the words that had passed between them seemed every bit as intimate as sex and they were somehow much closer. When they had dropped off his car keys at the airport she turned to him with a candid interest. ‘I hope we meet again,’ she said. ‘Maybe you’ll come back some day.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure I will, Anastasia,’ he said, and he took her hand and held it. ‘I’ve really enjoyed talking to you, and I know we will speak about the boy again. You have my number and my email, right?

  She nodded and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Good luck. I hope you find him. He’s going to be something really important, I am sure.’

  ‘Maybe he already is,’ said Samson, smiling, and he turned to the departure gate.

  Four

  He waited at the hotel in Athens for Jean-Jacques Pinto for over four hours. It seemed the filmmaker had forgotten about their appointment and was not prepared to come back to the hotel until after he’d completed shooting scenes at the city’s main bus station, where boys travelling alone were identified and detained, and then at the orphanages where they were kept.

  Samson was frustrated and angry. With every hour that went by the boy was getting further away from him, and soon he would be lost in the wilderness of the Balkans.

  When Pinto eventually materialised in the lobby with his crew, Samson’s mood did not improve. Pinto, a short, volatile young man with cropped hair, a scarf loosely tied around his neck and a great sense of his own importance, flatly refused to show Samson the footage from Lesbos. The more Samson reasoned with him, the more he protested. ‘Who is this fucking Englishman to tell me what I should do with my film?’ he asked his crew. What right did Samson have to interfere with the journalistic process? Did the English not appreciate that in France the activities of journalists and filmmakers were still sacred?

  Samson waited until Pinto ran out of steam, then took him by the arm and steered him firmly to a less public part of the lobby. He released him, looked at him hard and inhaled.

  ‘In your footage from the island there’s likely to be vital evidence that will save lives. I need to look through it. And I am not going away until I do.’

  Pinto averted his eyes. It was all Samson could do not to hit the jerk. ‘You don’t know me,’ he began quietly, ‘so I do understand your reservations, Monsieur. But let me just say that if you refuse to show me this material, the permissions you hold to film in Greece will be withdrawn immediately. Just one call from my government to Greece’s National Intelligence Service will ensure that happens. Do you need that kind of delay?’

  Pinto glanced around the lobby but said nothing. He scratched his stubble, fiddled with his scarf and rattled a pillbox he’d taken from his pocket.

  ‘I really don’t understand this reluctance,’ continued Samson. ‘Anastasia told me there would be no problem. We talked about your work and she said you were the sort of guy who would readily help. This boy we are looking for is in real danger.’

  The man looked at him doubtfully and popped a pill from the box. Samson knew he was about to fold. He shook his head regretfully. ‘I really don’t like to insist, but take my behaviour as a measure of my urgency.’

  Pinto blinked several times then turned to an assistant and said, ‘Laissez cet homme voir ce qu’il veut’ – Let him see what he wants. And with that he disappeared into the elevator.

 
His assistant, a young woman named Suzanne, came over with a laptop. She evidently thought the exchange highly amusing. ‘Jean-Jacques, he is a truly great director,’ she said with a smile, ‘but also he can be a little bit of an arsehole.’

  ‘We all can,’ said Samson, grinning. ‘I just was. Is there somewhere we can go where I can watch this undisturbed?’

  She offered her own room on the second floor and ordered coffee to be brought up.

  When they were settled, she explained that the footage was arranged thematically in five sections: general footage from the island; film of rescues and rescuers; film that dealt with the processing of refugees; film of the camps; film of the children. Since child refugees were Pinto’s subject matter, this section was where he should direct his attention.

  But first she’d play him some material that she was working on at the moment and was to hand. It was of a rescue in the northern tip of Lesbos, the place on the island closest to Turkey. ‘This is amazing footage,’ she said. ‘It captures so much of what the refugees endure. It’s just a few minutes.’

  Dawn had just broken on a stormy day. The film crew had obviously arrived in some haste, and the camerawork was shaky as the four of them leapt from the car. There was pandemonium everywhere, with people clad in wetsuits sprinting up a track beside the beach; others were yelling into radios and aiming high-powered torches out to the murky sea. A wind tore at the fire in a large brazier, sending streamers of smoke and sparks across the waves. More people came running with gold and silver survival blankets. Everyone was shouting.

  It took a few moments for the cameraman to find his bearings and work out what he should be shooting. At the same time, the film crew managed to get their lights working and the sound became more consistent. Pinto could be heard taking charge. The camera panned from two trees beside the track to the sea, where three large rigid inflatable rescue boats were going back and forth about one hundred metres from the shoreline, the beams of their searchlights slashing across the waves. The camera picked up two bodies, motionless in the water, then a couple more. Samson counted five in all. The camera zoomed in on the rescuers jumping into the water and dragging the bodies towards the boats, where they were hauled aboard. On the largest of the rescue boats, two crew members worked furiously, trying to bring people back to life, pumping at their chests and bending down to give them mouth-to-mouth.

  This went on for a minute or two, though it seemed much longer. Then Pinto appeared on camera, stumbling across the wet stones on the beach, scarf flying around his head. He had seen something. The camera followed him, then moved beyond him to focus on a body in a life jacket bobbing in the sea. Pinto waded into the water to seize hold of the person and drag them the last few metres to the beach. The person’s arms began to flail as he did – they were still alive. With one arm, Pinto was also gesturing ahead, towards the trees. The camera jerked up and focused on a powerful jet ski that had arrived at a rickety jetty built below the trees. Attached to its rear was a platform and clinging to this were five exhausted people. Men ran into the water to help them make the short distance to dry land, which allowed the jet ski almost immediately to turn and head back out to sea. Once ashore, the sounds of people’s distress could be heard in snatches above the roar of the sea and the wind in the trees. They were pointing out to sea where their loved ones were drowning, and one or two had to be restrained from going back into the water.

  Now medical workers arrived and began to deal with the survivors, wrapping them in foil blankets, holding them, comforting them, guiding them towards the glowing braziers and checking them for injuries as best they could in the poor light. The camera seemed wary of intruding and, as one of medics stepped forward and gestured angrily at the crew, the picture wobbled before Pinto appeared and told the cameraman to stop filming. But in those few moments Samson saw a boy among those being led towards the fire. He had been one of the last to be plucked from the sea by the jet skis. He was clutching a backpack and was wrapped in a blanket, so his face was hidden. This could be any young boy but maybe – just maybe – Samson had witnessed the rescue of the boy he was looking for.

  The screen froze on the final image. ‘Jean-Jacques is thinking of opening the film with this.’

  ‘He should – it is very powerful,’ said Samson, ‘and very shocking, too. How many people were lost?’

  ‘Twenty-five I think,’ she said, still gazing at the blank screen. ‘Maybe you should tell me exactly what you are looking for?’

  ‘You saw the boy on the beach just now? Somewhere out there is a boy of his age who is in danger because he has information about some terrorists. We desperately need to find him. But we don’t have a photograph of him. We don’t even know his name. We heard a dolphin might have saved him. Does that ring any bells?’ She shook her head. ‘He was in the care of a woman called Anastasia at the camp. She’s a psychologist. Did you meet her?’

  Her eyes lit up. ‘Yes, a truly great person. I liked her a lot. We filmed her.’ She went to work on the laptop and quickly found the film shot at the medical centre. Samson was suddenly looking at Anastasia as she conducted a group therapy session through an interpreter. All the boys’ heads were turned away, so the camera focused on her as she laughed and joked with them. There were several other scenes featuring Anastasia – an art therapy class, one-to-one therapy and some sort of role-play session – but always the boys’ faces were hidden or indistinct.

  ‘Damn,’ he muttered as the sequence came to an end. Partly this was because he liked watching Anastasia with the kids. She was so good at engaging them and making them participate.

  ‘Don’t give up so easily,’ said Suzanne. ‘When we left that day, after being with Anastasia, Jean-Jacques had this idea that we walk out of the camp with a following tracking shot.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It is when the camera moves with the subject. It’s like the famous scene in Goodfellas when Henry Hill is going through a restaurant – such a great piece of cinematography, because you really get the wise guy thing. Do you know what I’m talking about?’

  ‘Afraid not.’

  ‘Scorsese is a master. Jean-Jacques admires him a lot. Anyway, we did this shot and Pierre – that’s our cameraman – followed Jean-Jacques from the medical centre out of camp to give the idea of the scale.’

  She searched the laptop and clicked play.

  The camera began to move down a long, winding pathway bordered on both sides by a high fence that was topped with razor wire. Wherever Pinto looked the camera followed him; whenever he paused the camera paused. First he peered right, through the wire, at a line of women waiting for the camp’s maternity and paediatric services. Then he looked left, at some police dogs that were being fed and watered. He glanced at the light in the trees and at his feet walking through the dust.

  The pathway reached the gate, and he looked left, at three boys in the yard of a small compound.

  ‘Can you stop it now?’ Samson said. He pulled out his cell phone, selected the camera option and held the phone to the screen. He took three separate close-ups of each boy, checked it and attached it to an email which he sent to Anastasia. A few seconds later, he called her and asked her to look at her inbox.

  He waited, listening to her breath and the tapping of her fingers on her keyboard.

  ‘Okay, I got the emails,’ she said. ‘The first one – no, that’s not him; the second – no, that’s not him, either; and the third – no, sorry! But you have the right group of boys.’

  ‘I’ll call you back,’ said Samson.

  Suzanne had already moved the film on to a couple of smiling girls who were calling through the perimeter fence. The camera came to rest on them and then returned to the object of their attention, a boy of about the right age, sitting in a white plastic chair very near the gate. His hands gripped the arms of the chair; his feet kicked at the dust. Instinctively Samson knew this h
ad to be him. He took a picture and emailed it to Anastasia. He rang immediately and she confirmed his instinct.

  ‘Fantastic,’ said Samson. ‘That is wonderful news. Speak soon.’

  ‘I really look forward to that,’ she replied. ‘Good luck, Paul – I know you’ll find him now.’

  ‘I hope so,’ he said. He wanted to say how good she was with the children and what a terrific impression she made on the film, but for some reason he didn’t. He thanked her, said he hoped they would meet again and hung up.

  ‘Can you give me the best still you’ve got of this kid?’ he asked Suzanne. ‘And send it to me at this address?’ He gave her his card. Then he had another idea. ‘Is it possible you could turn up the volume? I want to hear what those girls are saying to him.’

  They went through the whole sequence several times. It was clear that the girls were calling to the boy. Samson and Suzanne both strained to hear what they were shouting.

  ‘Sounds like na gee,’ said Suzanne.

  ‘You’re right – it’s Naji. It’s a name. You know what it means in Arabic? Survivor!’

  He called Anastasia again. ‘Me again! Do you think his name could be Naji?’

  ‘Could be – I heard someone call that out in the compound a few times.’ She thought for a second. ‘Yes, I think that may be it.’

  ‘That’s what I’m going with,’ he said. ‘Hey, you were terrific in the film – the kids obviously love you.’

  ‘Thanks – see you.’

  *

  The wire mesh that cut across part of Naji’s face in the still provided by the film company was digitally removed and the image enhanced so that SIS had an almost faultless portrait of the boy.

  Looking at the face in the photograph, which came by encrypted email later that afternoon, Samson thought he could perceive much of what Anastasia had been saying about the boy. There was indeed an intelligent light in those pale brown eyes, which looked out from beneath a mop of dark hair. Naji had fine features and a mouth that spread into the habitual smile of those rare people who find things come easily to them and are usually ahead of the game. Naji was good-looking and also had a kind of grace. Samson understood why those young girls had been shouting his name through the fence.