by Henry Porter
‘Pretty much,’ she said.
‘Would you mind holding on for a few moments?’
‘Of course not! By the way, he took a selfie by the trailer and I guess he sent it.’
He moved a little distance away and called Sonia Fell. ‘Can you ask our people to get a fix on the exact spot I’m calling you from now and then see if we can pick up any communications to Turkey from this point between five and five thirty today?’ he said. ‘He may have sent a text message as well as used the broadband. I don’t know about these things but it might be worth investigating whether this particular broadband router records any information from the devices using it. Maybe our Greek friends could look into that.’
‘Sure – will do,’ she said. ‘How are things?’
‘I’m really close, but the boy is going the whole way as an illegal which means we’re not going to pick him up at the border crossings, and we’re unlikely to find him at any of the transit camps through the Balkans.’
‘But if he’s a Syrian he doesn’t need to do that – he’s a legitimate refugee.’
‘He’s underage. If he’s caught he’ll be sent to some God-awful facility. I suspect that’s his biggest fear right now.’
He returned to Anne-Marie and she led him to the spot where the Africans were standing around a fire.
At first they were suspicious, but Samson, speaking Arabic and some French, dispensed charm and cigarettes, together with the information that he was looking for his nephew, a boy called Naji whom he knew had been at this spot within the last two hours. He showed the photograph around the circle of men and they agreed that he had been there, but were reluctant to say much more.
‘It’s important I find him,’ said Samson. ‘He’s just a kid.’
A Moroccan with a slightly menacing air said, ‘That’s what the others said. How do we know who you are? You could be police.’
‘I am not the police,’ Samson said quietly. ‘How many others?’
‘He has a lot of uncles, this Naji,’ said the man. ‘Many relations from Syria are looking for him.’
‘How many?’ Samson shot back.
The man didn’t answer.
‘It’s important,’ said Samson.
‘Two,’ said a good-looking African.
‘Are you sure?’
They all nodded.
‘Can you tell me where the boy is now? Did you tell these men that you saw him?’
The group fell silent.
‘I need to know – he could lose his life.’
They said nothing more and Samson walked away in the dark. He wasn’t done with them. He’d call Procopio and ask him to have all the men questioned by the local police. After all, he now had evidence that an IS cell was looking for the boy. He phoned London. Okiri and Fell were both busy. He left a message saying he’d had a breakthrough.
As he hung up, the African who had confirmed that two men were looking for Naji came up to him and said he might be able to help some more. Samson realised he wanted money and gave him twenty euros. The man started gesturing and speaking very quickly: the boy had gone with the group to a point in the fence where an opening would be made while the guards looked the other way. He didn’t know what time this would occur, but it would be some time that night. He said that Naji was with a man named Joseph from Ghana. Joseph was a good guy. Naji would be okay with him. Most of the group were from North Africa, though there were also a couple of Pakistanis who had been twice thrown back by the Macedonian police, and two from Afghanistan. He personally suspected this was a scam by the Macedonians to take money from the migrants before returning them to Greece: that’s why he hadn’t gone.
‘The men who asked about the boy, do they know where he is?’
‘Yes, one of the people here told them. I think they went to the place.’
Samson swore under his breath. ‘If you show me the quickest way to the place where they are going to cross, there’s another twenty euros in it for you.’
The man nodded and went to collect his things from his friends. Samson phoned London to inform his colleagues that he might have to enter Macedonia illegally in pursuit of the boy.
*
Naji lay alongside Joseph the Ghanaian under a bush, watching the fence thirty metres away. There was no moon and the lights of the towns of Gevgelija and Idomeni were now far off to the east, yet the night was quite light and they could make out the fence. The whir of insects was unlike anything Naji had heard, and moths rose from the dry grass and flew into their faces, causing Joseph to splutter and manically fan the air in front of him. Around them in the bushes were hidden about thirty men and a couple of families with small children, all of whom had paid money to the smuggler.
He looked up at the stars and remembered when he and his father had lain on the warm concrete of their yard at home and his father had pointed out the constellations to him and talked about Darb Al-Tabbāna, the Hay Merchants’ Way, which Europeans call the Milky Way. It seemed such a very long time ago – a lifetime away. His father took hold of his hand and dragged it across the night sky and told him that from end to end the Hay Merchants’ Way was 100,000 light years. And Naji had protested that a hay merchant would die before he reached the end of his journey, so he couldn’t have travelled all that distance, and his father, who was so playful and was never ever severe with his children, lay beside him shaking with laughter. ‘You have many gifts, my son,’ he had eventually said, ‘but poetry has escaped you.’
Naji took no notice, because the truth was that he didn’t have any idea what his father meant. He was just fascinated by the idea of light taking all that time to travel across the Darb Al-Tabbāna, and he asked his father if it were truly possible that some of the light that reached them as they lay in the yard had emanated from distant suns before human civilisation even existed. And his father said yes, he supposed that might be true, and for the first time Naji grasped the vastness of space and he knew that this was his subject – the subject that he would explore one day, just like the great Muslim astronomers of the past. Thinking of this now helped calm his nerves.
Half an hour later they became aware of some activity in front of them. Naji strained his eyes to see what was going on. He could just make out the shadows of two men working at the fence against an area of light rock. Then a low whistle came from the other side and suddenly there was activity all around him. Shadows he thought were bushes began to rise and were running towards the fence. Naji and Joseph were among the first to arrive at a hole of about half a metre wide: a section had been cut and neatly rolled back. They went through after a group of Afghans but then realised there was another obstacle to cross: a taller fence with coils of razor wire in front of it. The Afghans were now going up and down in the space between the two fences, searching for a second gap, and were beginning to sound quite desperate. Naji stood still, scanning the line of the second fence, and it was he who spotted the flame from a cigarette lighter being held against the other side of the fence, about seventy metres away. He touched Joseph on the arm and they jogged to the spot. At first, it wasn’t obvious how they were going to pass through the razor wire, but, having dropped to his hands and knees, Joseph found an area where the wire had been raised and it was possible to crawl under it. Naji went first because he was the smallest. He soon realised he could only avoid being caught on the razor barbs of the wire by shoving his backpack along the ground ahead of him. Once he’d cleared the wire, he had to wriggle to a standing position and move a couple of metres to the right, where a hole had been cut in the mesh of the fence. But this was impossible without being snagged by the wire, so he placed the stick he’d taken from the transit camp against a rock and used the purchase to push the coils back. Joseph hooked the wire onto itself and they were able to move through the hole.
Naji suddenly found himself in the night of another country and realised he had no
idea what he was going to do. He’d been so focused on getting across the border that he hadn’t thought about the next part of the plan. Joseph didn’t seem to have any idea either, so Naji decided to hang back and wait for Joseph’s friends to come through the second fence. They’d know what to do and he would ask them if he could tag along with them.
But progress was slow. A man with a young child was snagged in the razor wire and was holding everyone up. People between the two fences were becoming extremely agitated and matters weren’t helped by someone spotting a flash of light along the line of fence, which they thought might be the border patrol. Eventually it took several men with knives and a small torch to cut him free. The man with the child eventually came through the second fence, followed by his wife, and started fussing over the kid, who until that moment had been quiet. The child started crying and the father had to silence it by wrapping a hand over its mouth, and that caused the woman to scold him. Then she noticed that he was bleeding from his head and she started crying and he barked at her to stop her nonsense. Joseph swore under his breath – these people would get them all arrested if they didn’t shut up, he muttered.
Naji was annoyed too, but he was also a little sorry for them. He remembered the time that his own family passed into Turkey, under the noses of Turkish guards, and how they had all been so terrified that they spent the night snapping at each other. His mother slapped his youngest sister, which she’d never done before, and his dear father, who was desperately frail after the hellish things that had been done to him, was so bewildered and fearful that he went to pieces and had to rely on Naji to get them across. But that was all right, because it had been Naji’s plan in the first place.
They listened intently to what was happening on the other side of the fence, and they could tell from the direction of the voices that a few had turned back to climb through the first fence, so as not to risk being caught by the border patrol. Earlier, when they were making their way to the rendezvous with the Bulgarian, Naji had heard the men saying that it would be better to stay in Greece than encounter the Macedonians in the middle of the night, because they could rob you, kill you and bury you in the forest, and nobody would be any the wiser.
Naji was asking Joseph whether it was best to hide out in the woods or head in the direction of Gevgelija, but before he finished his question he heard a sound that chilled his blood.
From a few metres behind him came the unmistakable voice of Al-munajil cursing as he negotiated the razor wire. And then he heard the voices of Usaim and Ibrahim. It seemed one was caught up on the wire. Naji couldn’t tell which and he wasn’t going to wait to find out. He started backing away.
‘Where’re you going, kid?’ asked Joseph.
‘I can’t be here,’ he hissed. ‘Those men talking now, they’ll kill me if they find me here.’
‘Which men?’
The conversation had already gone on too long for Naji. ‘The man with the voice. I have to go now. I hope to see you again some day, Joseph. Thank you.’
He lifted his pack and, although he had never been in anything like a forest before and the thought of it scared him, he started walking quickly uphill towards the great black trees he could see silhouetted against the starry sky.
*
Samson received a text on the encrypted phone: Advise do not cross into Macedonia. Enter legally and meet Vuk, who will be at Macedonian registration centre, Gevgelija, with car.
He texted back: Too late, am already in. Will find Vuk later.
Chief says return now, came the reply. Call us.
Return NOT possible – way back closed, wrote Samson. Can’t speak now. Will call when I can.
Nothing came in response to that and he returned the phone to his pocket. He had of course lied about being in Macedonia, because he knew how close he was to the two, or maybe three, men who were posing as Naji’s relations and were almost certainly IS killers. To return to the transit camp on foot, which would take an hour and a half, cross legally into Macedonia and then try to pick up the trail on the other side of the border would waste too much time.
As he approached the breach in the border, the African who had showed him the way, and was now himself intending to go over the border, recognised the voices of a pair of Moroccans he knew from the camp. They were stumbling through the dark with a huge tube that turned out to be an irrigation pipe, which one of them had noticed in a field on the way to the rendezvous with the smuggler. They explained they needed something to lift the razor wire between the two fences because there was a bottleneck and a lot of migrants were waiting to get through.
Samson and the African followed them to the opening in the first fence and helped pass the pipe through to the Moroccans. A little way down the slope, they came to the second opening and the tangle of razor wire that was now holding everyone up. One of the Moroccans scrambled under the wire and the pipe was fed through to him. He placed the end on top of the far fence. It was then a simple matter to lift the other end of the pipe so that the coils of wire rose and people could pass beneath them, barely having to stoop. They all got through, even the last man, who had to bear the whole weight of the pipe as he moved under the wire. He let it go and it fell to the rocky ground with a clank that rang through the night.
Samson went around asking the huddles of figures if they had seen the boy, but he got nowhere and so returned to his companion, who was in animated conversation with another African named Joseph. It didn’t take long for him to discover that Naji had fled, having recognised the strange voice of someone he said would kill him, and that Joseph had subsequently encountered three men who wanted to know if he had seen a young Syrian named Naji. With one of them holding a knife to his throat, they had demanded to know which way the boy had gone. Joseph pointed them in the wrong direction, but he wasn’t sure they believed him and in the dark it was difficult to know which way they had ended up going. After a certain amount of persuasion, he told Samson that Naji had headed straight up the hill.
Samson set off, but after a few hundred metres he stopped, got out the phone with the satellite sleeve, and pulled up the map of the area. Naji was headed north and into an area that, apart from a few tiny settlements, consisted almost entirely of mountains and wilderness. He didn’t think the boy would last long in that kind of country, even if he managed to avoid the killers.
He sat down on a rock, took out a cigarette and considered whether to smoke it. He soon lost any reservations, lit up and began to imagine what he would do in the circumstances. There was only one answer for a boy who had been brought up in a sparse desert landscape and who’d never seen a forest, still less spent any time in one at night. He would go a little way, then hunker down until morning. When he thought the danger had passed, he’d return to the spot where he started out. Samson was quite sure he would eventually come back to the border fence and use it as a way of finding his way to Gevgelija and the station.
He checked his text messages. There was one from Sonia, telling him that Vuk Divjak had arrived in town. He replied, giving his rough coordinates and suggesting Vuk meet him on a track about three kilometres from his current position at 6 a.m. It wouldn’t be hard to find because it was at the point where the track grazed the border with Greece. He stowed the phone, looked up at the stars and let his senses attune to the forest around him. It wouldn’t be long until dawn.
*
Naji’s terror took him far. He climbed straight up the hill – not easy in the dark, the ground still slippery in places from the storms of a couple of days before. As he went higher, he realised he had to keep going rather than turn back, for descending would be more dangerous in the dark than climbing. He reached the summit, felt his way through a kind of miniature gorge and came to a gentle slope where the trees were taller and there was much more undergrowth. This he did not like because he imagined all sorts of animals lurking at his feet. He feared snakes particularly. In
his reading about the Balkan Mountains on the web he had discovered that there were a number of different types of snake in Macedonia. He took out his throwing knife and his torch, which was safe to use now he was far away from the fence, and found a path of bare earth through the undergrowth. After a few minutes he came to an outcrop of rock that rose through the trees. It was an easy climb. He got halfway up and decided to make camp on a flat area that was sheltered by a wall of rock and an overhang.
He busied himself with the plastic sheet, which he spread to keep the sleeping bag dry, and inspected his store of food, deciding what he would eat and what he would save for the morning. This kept his mind from Al-munajil and the memory of the terrible things he’d forced Naji to witness, which had been stirred up by hearing that voice twice in the last couple of days. He concentrated on eating his bread, a chunk of hard cheese and the chocolate he’d filched from the kiosk in Thessaloniki, just before the old man had made him a gift of an energy bar.
His gaze drifted from the shapes of trees against the night sky to the forest floor and he became aware of something astonishing. Below him were thousands of tiny yellow pulsing lights: some were stationary; others wandered in the night like crazy, slow tracer bullets. His first insane thought was that the stars of the Hay Merchants’ Way had fallen from the sky and were dancing in the forest, for that was exactly what it looked like – a minute swirling galaxy among the trees. And then the word firefly came into his mind, not that he’d ever seen a firefly or read anything about the insect. But he knew such a thing existed and this must be what he was seeing – thousands upon thousands, blinking in the night. He had perhaps never been so desolate as when he climbed up onto that rock, but now optimism surged through him and he gave a yelp of joy to the forest, which seemed to have welcomed him and contained no threat whatsoever. He wished he were with Munira so they could see this wonder together, especially now the breeze was pushing the fireflies up the hill towards him, some of them rising to the branches that spread over the outcrop to make a canopy of lights. This was not just magical, he thought: it was a sign – like the big fish that had saved him – that his journey was blessed and that he would succeed in reaching his destination.
