by Finn Óg
In an office two cells away, Big Suit was asking stupid questions and Tassels was pontificating.
“I don’t know what you want from this rat. Why can’t I clip him until he tells us where the cash is?”
“Can you not see there is something else going on here? Why else would he risk crossing Libya into Egypt? If you’re going to traffick people away by sea, why not do it from your own country?”
Big Suit sat silent for a while. Above the neckline his wheels span slowly. “Because Libya is a mess since Gaddafi got ousted?” he said eventually, looking at his senior for affirmation.
“Exactly my point. It’s a bigger risk, isn’t it, trekking across Libya. Yes?”
“I suppose so,” said Big Suit, who was broadly aware of the turmoil traversing the cities of the coastal highway, west to east, Tripoli to Benghazi and beyond.
“And why here? If the rat really just wanted to avoid the taxes of the Libyan elite, why not launch the boats closer to the border? How many cities are there between the Libyan–Egyptian checkpoint and Alexandria?”
Big Suit looked into the space in front of him and imagined the map of North Africa: the straight lines down from the sea, the jagged horizontals. His head actually juddered and rotated slowly clockwise as he charted the Libyan coast, the border and then counted the towns on the way to his own.
“Ten maybe?” he offered.
“So why here? Why bring them all the way to a bigger place, with more police, with its own coastguard and soldiers?”
“Maybe he likes the posh hotels?” Big Suit ventured.
“That rat is not an idiot,” said Tassels. “He came here for a reason and we need to know what it is.”
“Why?”
“Because the time is coming when we may have to get out,” said Tassels.
“Out?” repeated Big Suit, struggling.
“Of Egypt.”
“Why?”
“Because the beards are coming. And when they do they’ll probably stop thinking about Cairo and turn their attention to other cities, like Alexandria.”
“The beards,” spat Big Suit. “They never last. Eventually we will have a strong president again and we can carry on as before.”
“You really don’t see it, do you?” said Tassels, withering in his contempt.
“See what? The Arab world needs order. It needs strong leaders. Like Mubarak was.”
“Mubarak was thrown in prison, you fool, and why was he put in prison?”
Big Suit had watched all the happenings from the television screen in the custody suite. Tahrir Square. The revolution. The sweeping clean of the cobblestones. His hero arrested and thrown in jail. Anyway, the army was still in charge. Much of the detail escaped him at the time, the rest had vacated his mind as more pressing information poured in. Like eating. And breathing. And sleeping. He shrugged.
“Why did the Arab Spring begin?” Tassels tried another tack, willing his muscle man to grasp the importance of what he was trying to say.
There was no response.
He pressed on. “Because people got tired of this – what we do. They’d had enough of corrupt governments, and Mubarak was corrupt. And the people were sick of it.”
Big Suit’s eyes were looking at Tassels but there was no ignition. He sat there like a truck full of fuel with no keys.
“Things are back to normal now.”
Tassels tutted. “You think like an Egyptian, not a man of the world. Look at what happened in Tunisia.”
“Tunisia is next to Libya, not Egypt,” said Big Suit, as if his grasp of North African geography earned him an unexpected point.
“That’s not the issue, you fool. The issue is what happened there and why it matters to us.”
“I don’t care about Tunisia or Tunisians. Nobody in Egypt does. That’s not the way Arabs work,” said Big Suit dismissively.
“You’re right,” said Tassels, which led to a proud buttock clench and a shimmy of the shoulders from Big Suit. “But what started it all and what did it create?”
“A grocer got cross and set himself on fire.” Big Suit shrugged – no big deal.
“But why?” Tassels tried to lead his colleague to the obvious conclusion.
“Because he was sick of taxes?” attempted Big Suit, which was sort of correct.
“Because of people like us,” said Tassels, “taxing and taking a cut, and because the government allowed it to happen. The authorities turned a blind eye – and probably taxed the corrupt collectors in turn. That grocer set himself on fire because he was sick of corruption.”
“So?” said Big Suit. “He died. What of it?”
“What of it?” shouted Tassels. “What of it is that Arabs everywhere saw an opportunity! What of it is that the Tunisians took down a regime!”
Big Suit stared at the floor for a while. “What’s that got to do with our thing?”
Tassels shook his head slowly. “Then it spread, didn’t it? It came here and Mubarak’s regime fell, then Gaddafi’s. Then it spilled blood everywhere. Yemen – look at Syria!”
“But what’s that got to do with the rat?” Big Suit shook his head.
“Is Egypt stable?” Tassels sighed, exasperated.
“It will be when we get another Mubarak.”
“Mubarak’s not coming back. You’re an idiot if you think the people will stand for that type of government again.”
Big Suit sat silent, admonished again.
“What happens in Arab countries when strong leaders fall?”
“Doesn’t happen very often,” Big Suit muttered.
“What happened in Iraq?”
“Mayhem.”
“What happened in Afghanistan?”
Big Suit started to catch the drift. “The beards took over. For a while anyway.”
“And what do the beards do?”
“They pray?” he ventured.
“They go back to another time. They force everyone back to another time. They take away opportunities for men like us – entrepreneurs. And what do they do with us?”
“They put us in jail?” Big Suit tried.
“They slice our throats.” Tassels drew his index finger across his neck.
Big Suit shuffled. “The beards won’t come here,” he said.
“They’re already here,” said Tassels, “and when they get their day I don’t intend to be here. You can stay if you like.”
“Getting into trafficking, though, that’s risky,” said Big Suit. “Taxing criminals for protection and taking a cut of profits, that all makes sense – makes money, but with trafficking there are strangers involved. We should just keep taking a little bit off everyone. We will still do well.”
“If we keep taxing,” said Tassels, “but things are changing. Soon there might not be anyone or anything left to tax.”
“So you say,” said Big Suit, “but I don’t know that the rising really changed anything.”
“Then why did they call it the Arab Spring?” spat Tassels.
Big Suit looked stumped.
“Ben Ali fell. Mubarak fell. Gaddafi fell. Assad will probably go eventually. When strong leaders go they are always replaced by something worse.”
“Not in Egypt,” said Big Suit. “We won't have the beards. Not here.”
“You don't see what could happen here – and so easily. The conditions are ripe.”
“This is not al-Qaeda territory.”
“Why do we never hear anything about the military offensive in the east?” asked Tassels. “It doesn’t need to be Taliban – there are all sorts of beards. Madder, even, than bin Laden’s bunch. They could make our way of life difficult. We could end up with no toes, trussed up in the cell down the hall if those bastards found out what we’ve been doing.”
Big Suit shrugged. “Those religious nuts are better off heading to Iraq where there is no control of anything.”
“You think like a city cop,” Tassels scolded him. “Look at the Copts. Those Christians are getting kil
led quietly every day. Nobody cares. The Sufis – they’re attacked all the time and nobody even knows about it. This is a revolution and it could be endless. Not every city is like Alexandria – even Cairo is different. The beards are still strong there and there are extremists in the desert.”
“The desert,” hissed Big Suit. “They eat camels in the desert.”
“You’ve never even been east,” countered Tassels. “Sinai – soldiers are wiped out there every day but you know nothing about it because there’s a news blackout. The government doesn’t want anyone to find out.”
“I don’t believe those rumours,” said Big Suit. “That’s just the beards trying to scare people, to make themselves look strong. There’s nothing in Sinai but hills and sand and Palestinians trying to escape Gaza.”
“You do not realise what is coming,” said Tassels. “We need money, and soon. And we need more than that.”
“What?” said Big Suit.
“We need a way out of Egypt when the time comes. And that greedy little Libyan rat can help us. That’s why he’s still breathing. For now.”
5
Isla sobbed as Sam winced. He’d been forced to plop a few drops of iodine into tank water to clean his cuts, which were worryingly deep. He waited for his arm to dry before applying superglue to seal the flaps of skin back into place.
His arm was badly chewed but that wasn’t his main concern – he could deal with that because he could see it – and mercifully he didn’t think there was a broken bone, but the muscular pain was substantial and he was certain his ribcage had a few cracks. It was his flank which was the worry. It was still bleeding, and although he couldn’t see his lower back he knew it definitely needed stitching and there was no way his daughter could do that for him. To add to the problem, the only kit to do it was a coarse two-inch sailing needle and repair thread.
“Can you help me?” he asked the women, holding the needle up and gesturing to his gaping back.
They recoiled when he turned to show them what he intended; the skinnier woman looking away to sea.
Sam knew the cultural problems, women touching men and so on, but he’d hoped that by saving one of them and her kid they might have overlooked such sensibilities.
And so it was that his terrified little girl was forced to hold the mirror he’d unscrewed from the wall in the heads while he performed the painful and awkward reverse repair. He growled back what would otherwise have been screams so as not to upset his child. The job was a mess – he knew he was adding ugly scars to the patchwork of his torso. The field hospitals he’d been deposited in hadn’t been graced with plastic surgeons, and while his body had occasionally been reworked by brilliant military doctors, their concern was to keep his heart beating and his lungs breathing, so another crazing on his skin was unlikely to matter greatly.
As he lay recovering, face down on towels on top of his bunk, he realised they’d a problem: it would take days for his skin to knit, so he couldn’t swim under the boat to free up the rope from the propeller shaft. He estimated they’d been drifting south for five hours, towards Africa, which wasn’t where he wanted to be. Sam was vaguely aware of the continued instability in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, and he never wanted to set foot in Libya again. He’d been there years before on an operation that had been successful but brutal and had no intention of returning.
His body wasn’t really fit for sailing either. He wasn’t even sure if he’d be able to pull a rope with his right hand, but there was no choice. He couldn’t land in Africa and that was the way the wind was blowing them. He needed to get rid of the women and the kid and get medical help. That meant Europe, where an Irishman could be seen without the handover of insurance or money – one of which he didn’t have, the other he was keen to keep hidden.
Wincing and weeping from his wounds, he lifted his body from the bunk. The only other option was to deposit the women on board a passing ship. The Automatic Identification System was a handy tool but Sam rarely turned their signal on. AIS helped vessels work out whether they were on a collision course with any fast-moving craft, and it allowed Sam to plot a route well away from passenger ferries or commercial container boats. The system could also transmit a huge amount of information, like where the crew was headed, what they were transporting, where their journey had originated and their unique identifier from the International Maritime Organization – through which any large freighter could be traced to its owner. Sam loved and hated the system in equal measure. As a troll he got great use out of it, but he’d become increasingly reclusive and was careful to protect his own privacy and that of his little girl. Therefore their own signal remained firmly switched off.
Twelve miles east was a vessel that looked like it might do the job: a ship with a vast hold laden with animal feed travelling from Beirut to Morocco. Sam decided to wait until its course settled and then sail towards it. When in range he could call its crew on the VHF radio, explain what had happened and hopefully get rid of his own cargo.
Habid woke to excruciating pain. Big Suit had chosen to rouse the rat by standing on the stump of the captive’s absent toe. Habid screamed in agony as the wound reopened, which pleased Big Suit as it would serve to frighten other inmates and make light work of their confessions. Big Suit didn’t often get the opportunity to prune the prisoners but Tassels had allowed him to go to work this time meaning that his boss probably knew what way things would go for the Libyan. It seemed unlikely the desert rat would require fingers or toes in future.
He yanked the chain as if flushing a toilet and dragged Habid like a feral dog through the corridor and into the interrogation suite. The Libyan’s slug-like trail of blood from his stump smeared the floor. Big Suit made a mental note to get him to clean it on his way back. If he made it back. Big Suit had slept well and was full of energy but he wasn’t sure how much more the Libyan could take.
Habid’s gaze rose to meet the smiling face of Tassels who directed that he was to be hooked up from the get-go.
Habid had prepared and so began his pitch. “Look, I realise you are businessmen and you are clever, so I have a suggestion about how we can work together for mutual benefit.”
Tassels laughed. Big Suit decided that was worth a kick.
As Habid gathered air back into his lungs, he tried again. “You want to make a fair cut of this business – I understand that. I was once a border guard and I also made a fair cut of everything that happened at my post in the desert,” he gushed. “Every man has to make money, it’s understandable.”
Tassels told Big Suit to get the bolt cutters.
Habid picked up the pace. “You need someone like me to find the people that want to leave.”
He glanced at the GPS in the bag on the table and hoped that the two policemen would be unable to interpret the dogleg trace of his movements across the desert. It quite literally represented his route out of jail.
Tassels was snorting again. “There are people all over Africa who wish to get to Europe.”
“Yes, but they are poor and cannot pay well. You need someone like me to find people with enough money to make it worthwhile taking this risk!” He began to shout. “The large boats – always intercepted. The wealthy people know that. They will end up in detention centres. But my service, what I offer, is different.”
“How?” Tassels tried not to sound too interested.
“Better – smaller boats, select clients, with money. They need escorted across the desert. They refuse to leave from Libyan coast because they know they will be caught or killed. Can you find such people – the ones who minimise the risk – fewer trips for more money? For that you need someone like me.” There was a pause behind him and Habid didn’t dare hope his suggestion had struck a chord. He filled the silence. “I can get the wealthiest, the people who were in Gaddafi’s circle. I can bring you the people who can pay big money. They live as dogs now, underground and hidden from the militias, the tribes. I can find them for you, bring them here and they ca
n pay you. And me,” he ventured.
“If they’re forced to live in the sewers, how can they pay?” Tassels asked dismissively.
“Because they kept their money in accounts in other countries. Many, many bank accounts in Africa, Europe, here in Egypt. That’s how they pay me when they cross the border.”
Tassels was mildly excited. He knew that much of what Habid was saying was true. The wealthy districts in Cairo were awash with foreign financiers – wealth managers in pin stripes.
Habid, however, was cautious not to give too much away. He’d taken some of the migrants across the border on the strength of big promises, only to find their accountants had snaffled the cash as soon as the Spring had sprung. Still, there were other ways to pay.
“The Libyan dinar is scrap now,” Tassels probed.
“Ah, but think back to when it was converted and deposited – when the oil flowed and the world wanted dinar to pay Gaddafi for black gold. That’s when it was turned to US dollars or Egyptian pounds. The value was taken out of Libya long before the leader fell.”
Tassels felt a tingle and paused for a moment. “So where is this money you made? From the last group?”
Habid thought of the transfers – of the bag in the roof space of the Sofitel, but his greed was so great he couldn’t bring himself to give it up. He remained silent.
Tassels tutted. “Thought as much.” He swept his hand forward as if throwing sand to the wind: proceed.
Habid’s heart sank. The cutters appeared, jaws open and menacing between his legs. He knew he was out of time, so he played his last hand. Well, most of it.
And then the bolt cutter retracted, its handler deeply disappointed.
