by Henry Porter
He began to cross-examine Joseph about going north, and asked him outright whether he could go with him and his friends. Joseph saw the question coming and looked down at him earnestly. ‘You are brave, little man, but are you strong enough for this?’ It was going to be the toughest thing he had ever done in his life, he continued. While everyone was going to look after each other on the trip – for they were a band of brothers now – they would not be able carry him if he became exhausted. They were all illegals and that fact would be obvious to the police when they left the crowds of legitimate migrants who were waiting for the trains to the Serbian border. They would be harried and chased across the country. They would risk beatings and deportation, and they would certainly experience hunger, thirst and great hardship. Some might not survive the journey.
As he spoke, half a dozen North Africans gathered round, together with a trio of Afghans they’d teamed up with. They nodded solemnly and stroked their chins in agreement with Joseph. Naji knew they thought he would hinder them.
He moved to the centre of the circle to address them all. ‘It is true that I am but a boy,’ he said slowly, ‘but I have seen more in my life than all of you put together. If you have suffered as I have, or have seen the things that I have, then you have my pity.’ Aware of the tremor in his voice, he stopped to get control of his emotions. ‘I have seen men tortured, burned, crucified. I have seen the bodies of the people Daesh beheaded. I have seen war and bombs. I have seen people lashed for smoking a cigarette, women stoned to death because someone accused them of going with another man. I have watched my neighbours – people I knew since I was a very small child – plead for their lives before they were killed for no reason, or because they were of another faith. My father’s best friend and his uncle were killed. But none of this has stopped me.’
Joseph told him that he needn’t go on. But he continued.
‘It was I, Naji, who led my family to safety, dodging Daesh fighters and under the noses of the Turkish border guards. I travelled alone across strange countries. I was nearly drowned in the ocean, but a dolphin saved me. Yes, a dolphin – a huge fish – kept me floating until the rescuers came. But for the good fortune that Allah has shown me, I would not be here now. Yes, I am but a boy, but I have experienced the worst things life has to offer, more than any man here. There is nothing that will stop me from reaching Germany and I pray that I will bring my luck and share it with you all. Let me come with you.’
Naji had never spoken like this before. In fact, he had never assembled all the horrors he’d witnessed in his mind at one time, and this made him feel self-conscious, as well as ashamed. He looked down at the ground. His face was hot and his hands were shaking.
‘If you are Syrian,’ asked one of the Afghans in Arabic, ‘why do you not get papers and travel with the people from your country?’
‘Because they’re like you. They think I’m just a boy, who should be locked up in a place for children,’ he replied fiercely.
‘You will come with us,’ said Joseph, placing a hand on his shoulder, ‘and we hope for some of Naji’s luck.’ And to underline to the others that Naji could be useful, Joseph told them all about how he had found the spot where it was possible to crawl under the razor wire.
The band of brothers numbered fourteen, but as they left town they split up so as not to cause suspicion. Two groups walked separately up the rail track and a third took the road. About an hour later they met up again on the bank of the river, just where it veered away from the road and railway into flat farmland. And this was when Naji experienced a sudden burst of hope, which he realised was as much to do with the lushness of the land as the fact that he was for the first time travelling with a group of people who treated him as an equal. As they went, they told their stories and sometimes Naji was able to translate from the English spoken by the Africans into the Arabic used by the men from Algiers and Tunisia and, haltingly, by the Afghans.
They walked for five hours, until one of the Afghans was stung by a bee and it seemed like a good moment to find somewhere to sleep. They made a small fire beneath some fruit trees and cooked what they had and shared it out, and Naji received much praise for the plastic sheet, which kept most of their belongings dry during a short rain shower in the early evening.
To mark this moment in his journey he took several shots of the group in the orchard with his phone, then asked one of his new companions to take a photograph of him sitting in the middle of the group, which he planned to send to Munira. The man was slow and wanted to look through the shots taken so far. Joseph seized the phone, told both of them to join the others and took a shot.
Only one incident spoiled that first hopeful twenty-four hours. Deep in sleep – the best sleep he’d had for a long time – he became aware of fingers moving lightly over his body and gently probing his bag, the strap of which was hooked around his left arm. He thought it was part of his dream, but something made him withdraw the hand that held the knife in his sleeping bag and wave it in front of him. At the same moment the man beside him murmured in his sleep. The fingers stopped moving at once and a few seconds later the presence withdrew, leaving only the smell of spicy breath in the still air above Naji’s face. Very soon after that he went back to sleep.
*
‘Where are you?’ Fell asked.
‘In Vuk Divjak’s car,’ replied Samson, surveying the clutter on the dash of Vuk’s Land Cruiser. ‘Which is more like a bloody folk museum.’
‘Is he with you?’
‘No, he’s in a café,’ Samson said. ‘Where the hell did you find him?’
‘You’ll get to like him,’ said Fell. ‘I’m going to put you on speaker now. You can guess for yourself who’s here. We also have other colleagues whom I won’t identify. You’re encrypted, but . . .’
‘Fine,’ said Samson.
‘And just for the record, tell us what happened,’ Fell asked.
‘I was picked up by the Macedonian border police because they said they suspected that I’d entered their country illegally. I was held for a few hours, but they couldn’t prove anything because they don’t stamp EU passports at the border. The absence of a stamp in my passport told them nothing.’
The arrest had been unnecessary and he felt a little foolish, which is why he didn’t go into it with Fell. Having decided that the boy was not going to make his way back to the fence, Samson sent a text to Vuk and began walking to their rendezvous. On the way he came across an old Arab man hobbling with a sprained ankle and scratches on his arms and face. He was bewildered and frightened. Samson felt he couldn’t leave him wandering in the scrub alone and led him back to the track and told him that it wasn’t far to the town, where he could rest and maybe find something to eat. At this point the border patrol came along and he and the old man were loaded onto a truck. It was something of a relief for the old man, who was probably suffering from dementia, but not to Samson, who was within a few minutes of meeting up with Vuk. He was held for five hours, roughed up and told that he was not welcome in areas sensitive to national security.
‘They told me I had forty-eight hours and then I had to leave, but that’s not going to be a problem,’ he said.
‘As long as you’re okay,’ said Fell.
Nyman came on the line. ‘Is it your view that the men pursuing the boy are still in the area?’
‘Hard to tell,’ he said. ‘If I hadn’t been delayed we might have seen who came out of that forest this morning. My guess is that they’ve joined the migrants going north. There are very large numbers in town today. The border was opened to those with registration papers, but there were also coordinated breakouts with as many as five or six separate breaches in the fence.’
‘You’ve seen our email outlining the main points of this morning’s meeting. What do you think about the reasoning that the boy was more involved with these men than we originally thought?’
‘I agree, and you’re right to concentrate on evidence that we know we can lay our hands on in Greece. I can’t say what his involvement might have been.’
‘I want you to stay on the boy anyway,’ said Nyman. ‘I appreciate it’s going to be hard but Vuk will have spotters along the way – good men he works with on a regular basis.’
‘Great,’ said Samson.
‘I’ll leave you with this thought: I’m certain we haven’t got the whole picture. We’re missing something, I’m sure.’ He paused. ‘Oh yes, there’s one other thing. We’ve come up with the coded message to the boy and are arranging for it to appear on various migrant websites and the Facebook pages they’re using. It will also be printed and posted in places along the route – registration centres, feeding stations, medical centres etc. It will mean nothing to anyone else.’
‘It could be an idea to mention the psychologist from the island,’ said Samson. ‘She’s about the only person he trusts in Europe – he opened up to her. Why don’t you make her part of the message?’
‘You think she might help us bring him in?’
‘Yes, but you’d better check with her.’
He clambered out of the car at the end of the call, lit a cigarette and watched Vuk Divjak coming towards him, trailed by a young thug in a leather jacket whose hair was shaven at the sides. Vuk’s walk fascinated Samson. The Serb moved with a kind of a regretful determination, like a farmer on his way to slaughter his favourite pig – fists clenched, eyes averted and lost in a strange, angry sadness.
‘What’s up?’ said Samson.
‘Nothing up – everything down. Life is bitch.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘This Aco – he is working with me. I tell him we look for spy boy come from hell.’
‘The spy boy come from hell – indeed,’ said Samson. ‘It’s important that we find him.’
‘Spy boy, he gone on Vardar River.’ He turned to the thug in the leather jacket. ‘Maybe Aco see boy playing pipe today.’
Samson showed him the still from the documentary on his phone. Aco tugged the ear with the diamond stud and nodded.
‘Where?’
‘By market, then near the station,’ he replied.
‘Then boy go up fucking Vardar River,’ said Vuk, gesturing to the north.
‘Aco follows the boy – he goes with others.’
‘Did he try to get on train?’
‘No. He took shower at registration centre. He ate food then he goes with others up Vardar,’ said Vuk.
‘Take me to the place where you saw him,’ said Samson.
‘No point. We wait for Simeon and Lupcho. They come now.’
Samson went to buy food and water to put in his pack. He returned as Vuk’s helpers arrived in a black BMW with low-profile tyres, several dents and an air of criminality. Simeon, the rougher looking of the two, wore trainers, tracksuit pants and an open khaki military shirt over a T-shirt that featured an AK-47. Lupcho, who was taller, was dressed in black and wearing sunglasses and red trainers with a silver trim.
‘These magnificent cunts,’ said Vuk, wrapping an arm around each of them.
‘You know that’s not an especially flattering term in English,’ said Samson, shaking their hands in turn.
‘I say cunts are magnificent! What is matter with this?’
‘Nothing,’ said Samson, shaking his head. He entered their three mobile numbers in his phone contacts and sent them each the photo of the boy, saying that they had to keep it to themselves. Vuk said he’d castrate all three if any of them leaked the photo, and added that he would be doing a service to the women of Macedonia, Serbia and probably Albania, too.
He brushed the dust from the bonnet of his car and spread out a map.
Samson traced his finger along the Vardar River, from its source in the western mountains near Kosovo through the capital, Skopje, to the point where it plunged south through the central highlands to Greece. He noted that for all that stretch the river was tracked by the Alexander the Great Highway as well as the north–south rail line. This was very rugged terrain and proximity on a map was no guarantee of access from either the rail line or road to the river.
It was decided that Simeon and Lupcho would watch a gap forty kilometres north of Gevgelija, where the land begins to rise sharply. Any migrant planning to walk to the Serbian border would have to go through that pass, whether by rail track, road or by following the river course. Aco, meanwhile, would go on his trail bike to patrol a place where the rail track and unmade road ran along the eastern bank of the river. If they didn’t find the boy in the next twenty-four hours, Vuk would redeploy them. He told them to keep their cell phones on and find a place where they always had reception.
‘It’s important that they don’t scare the shit out of the boy,’ Samson said to Vuk. ‘Can you tell them not to approach him if they see him? But if they see anyone attacking this boy, they’re to do their best to save him.’ When Vuk had finished translating, he added, ‘They should know that the men trying to harm the boy are extremely dangerous. They won’t hesitate to kill anyone who gets in their way.’
Vuk nodded and turned to the men, who produced various expressions of contempt and patted what Samson assumed were concealed weapons. Vuk looked at Samson with a piratical leer and told him that these were his best men and that they had spent many hours in the mountains dealing with Albanians and Kosovars and there was no better way to test a man. ‘These men not disco pussies,’ he said as they departed in a cloud of dust. ‘They fucking lions.’
*
On the second day the band of brothers started in a misty grey light that stole across the plain. They walked through the morning until the October sun was above them and burning their necks, but the wall of mountains seemed as distant as when they’d set out the day before. About midday, Naji became aware of soreness in his right heel. He stopped and took off the trainer – hard material was protruding from the inside of the shoe and had caused a blister to form at the back of his heel. He cut the material off, but the damage was done and the little dome of the blister had to be burst, which he did with the point of the throwing knife. He changed into the trainers he’d stolen on the boat, but before putting them on he cut a piece of his special clean cloth to tie round his heel. This became dislodged as he hurried to catch up with the group, but the soreness was much less.
He found them sitting in the shade of a lone carob tree. Some dozed; others stared silently across the shimmering yellow fields. The land was tinged with autumn colours but the temperature was more like summer and each of the men was showing signs of exhaustion. He sat down and ate a banana, a piece of bread and a chocolate bar that had melted in his pack, noting that chocolate – hard or melted – was the best thing in the world.
There were no jokes and no stories – the banter had gone. The group wanted only to talk about the route. The Africans, including Joseph, were for staying by the river, because they said they were less likely to attract attention there, but others, including an Iraqi, three guys from Afghanistan and an Algerian who had come through the hole in the fence just behind Joseph and Naji, wanted to cross the river at a road bridge, head to the rail track and walk up the line to Serbia. They said this would be the shortest route north, whereas the path they were currently following meandered with the river and would add days to the journey. The debate went on in at least three different languages for about half an hour. Although Naji wanted to remain with the Arabic speakers and the Afghans, he felt loyalty to Joseph, so he said nothing. Eventually, the talk petered out and soon they were all getting to their feet and hoisting their packs.
The afternoon cooled and a little of the spirit of the first day returned. Naji went off to forage for bunches of hard, yellowish grapes from a vineyard that stretched for kilometres to the east. It was when he approached Joseph and gave him a handful of grapes
that he smelled his breath, the same breath he’d smelled when he was half asleep the night before. It had been Joseph’s hands that had prodded and felt him and his possessions, trying to find his money. The man he liked most in the group had tried to rob him! He looked at Joseph’s smiling face and knew he would try again and that sooner or later he’d be successful. Now he understood why Joseph had persuaded the others to let him join them: all along he had planned to rob him and leave him in the middle of nowhere without money.
He dropped back from the main group, burning with anger. Not knowing anything was wrong, one of the Afghans started to talk to him, and gradually Naji calmed down, although he knew he had to get away from Joseph and find other allies in the group. The two of them stopped by a bend in the river where the water washed into a little bay and the Afghan, whose name was Lashkar, showed him how to skim stones, but only on the condition that Naji taught him how to throw a knife, which he’d seen him do the previous evening.
They’d fallen behind quite a bit, so they quickened their pace to catch the others. A few minutes later, when they were still a hundred metres or so behind the others, they became aware of a mechanical thump in the air. Curling round a low hill of pine trees ahead of them was a large, camouflaged helicopter. Naji knew the model of the aircraft instantly – a Mil Mi-17 two-engine turbine transport helicopter – and he could recite by heart the details of the design, range and lift of the Russian-made helicopter. But that was not what entered his mind. What made him yell at the others and start running back down the track towards a bed of reeds was remembering seeing his first barrel bombs.
There had been two, and they were dropped from a much larger Russian helicopter as it went into a climb over the town. He’d watched the bombs tumble chaotically through the air, stubby fins glinting in the sun as they spun round. He knew instantly what they were but it seemed impossible to him that they would cause so much damage, so he just looked on, wondering at the crudeness of the weapons. They landed either side of a school. The shock wave blew him over. He struggled up to see several buildings gone and huge white plumes of smoke that looked like two ears. Later, he heard of the children – all of them girls – killed by the explosions. They never found anything but the smallest traces of them. He thanked Allah that his own sisters went to another school and had not been targeted.
