by Finn Óg
And so he strolled from Egypt into Libya without hassle through an official checkpoint as opposed to the line in the sand he had used on his outward journey. He nodded and smiled and nobody cared. And then he evacuated his bowels and bought enough food and water to see him though the seven-hour journey. He boarded a minibus, paid his fare and struck out for Benghazi. There he would retrieve his precious papers, his passport to wealth, his leverage, his loathing, his pension, his gold.
Sam’s gaze fell to the horizon where the sun was languishing just before it flicked off the lights. He had tried not to think about it but seeing the blossoming friendship between his child and the rescued kid had nudged a worry given where these people were from, what had they seen and what that might mean for Isla.
Sam had believed in the notion of preparing kids to take care of themselves, but that was before Shannon had died. It worried him that the only person of her own age Isla spent any time with was a child who may have seen equally bad – or perhaps worse – stuff. The root of his concern was their point of departure. Libya was a place with which he was to an extent familiar. It was not a destination of mixed emotions for Sam. It was not like Gaza, which had been grim and wonderful in equal measure. He had, after all, met his wife in Gaza, amid horror. In Libya, he had met only horror.
Years had passed since his first visit. His superiors had largely kept him in the dark at the time. His orders had been both clear and vague. Clear in that he was to make sure an intelligence officer was safely delivered to a particular destination; vague about why he needed to be delivered at all. Sam had eventually been told what it was all about.
Sam had taken four good men and a spook from the sea deck of an aircraft carrier into one of the Special Boat Service’s custom-built FICs. The Fast Interceptor Crafts were ideal for such operations because in the relatively flat waters of the Mediterranean there’s no need for wave-cutting boats, which, although fast, have limited ability to launch other shore-going vessels. Besides, the Interceptors could pass undetected beneath most radar scans.
The bosses had relished the opportunity to deploy the FIC as opportunities outside training missions had been few, but, still, Sam couldn’t figure out why the Security Service hadn’t opted to fly the spook into Libya given that the place was awash with white European oil engineers. It was well above his pay grade to worry about it, though, and given that he’d only ever used the FIC in training he was as keen as anyone to get aboard and use it in anger.
After a spine-crushing three-hour blast at just under sixty knots, the coxswain rounded the boat’s transom towards the Libyan coast and the inflatable Raider was launched. A skittery boat, not as easy to handle as its rigid-hulled big sister, but much less detectable and easier to carry across the sand than a solid craft. From there, the crew was down to three: Sam, a sergeant and a spook.
Ashore, the sergeant was left to conceal the boat under strict orders to extract if a predetermined time elapsed. Then Sam and the intelligence officer stripped to their crumpled underclothes and made for the shadows around the edge of the city. From that point on it was an intel op.
Sam was happy to accede responsibility. The spook was a fit-looking thirty-something by the name of Dyer. To Sam’s surprise he’d turned out to be a Northern Irishman just like himself, and although they didn’t talk much all the signs were that he was cautious and hard enough to get the job done. He took direction when command rested with Sam and through gesture and the odd smile betrayed his sensibilities. Sam had caught his eyebrow rising just a jot during the briefing as an overzealous and under-witted senior officer from an unidentified agency had tried to impress upon them the consequences ‘for Her Majesty’s Government’ should things go awry. Sam felt at ease when the operation reverted to Dyer. If things went bad, he was confident they could make a fist of it together.
Her face was set. Stern. Dignified.
They sat for hours. The only movements were Sam’s carving the boat through the waves making west, almost thirteen nautical miles in absolute silence. Sam’s hands instinctive on the wheel, it spinning and adjusting as he lessened his grip allowing the hull’s shape to do its job. The air hadn’t cleared but it was thinning, and he allowed some hope that the anger would eventually lead to some form of truce. They refused to look at one another all that time, which helped each formulate their thoughts. The breakthrough came with a distraction.
“Daddy, how long till we stop again?” Isla’s raggedy head appeared at the companionway.
“A long time, Isla. Don’t start asking all the time. We won’t stop again until we run out of food or water.” Things Sam had intended to sort out while ashore until events had rather overtaken him.
“Well, what can we do?”
Sam was instinctively frustrated by the question, then turned it to his advantage. “You can put on your harness and life jackets and teach Sadiqah how to sail. You can teach her mammy too,” he said, not glancing at the woman. From the corner of his eye he could see her shift slightly, her feet shuffling on the lip of the locker she had wedged herself against. The suggestion stirred her to speak, to verbalise something she’d evidently been thinking about.
“You can call me by my name now, I think.”
“Ok,” said Sam, relieved she appeared to be extending an olive branch.
“Alea,” she said.
“His name is Sam,” said Isla, earning her another look from her father.
Sam deliberately tested Alea straight away by extending his hand. He knew that if she took it, the niqab had simply been part of the escape. No committed burka-wearing Muslim woman would touch a man.
She waivered, looked up at him and then rolled a little to place her small fingers in his enormous paw.
“Pleased to finally meet you,” he said, looking directly at her.
“How do you do?” she replied slowly with a rote response, which suggested to him that English had been learned in one of Libya’s finer establishments.
“Get Alea a life jacket,” he told Isla, who scuttled off below.
The thaw had begun but there was clearly a lot of hard frost to chip away, and Sam knew only too well that it wouldn’t be until the ice melted and the cracks uncovered that the real damage would be revealed.
Benghazi had been beautiful. Once. Something else to thank the Italians for, thought Habid. In scooping migrants from the sea they’d made his operation possible. They had persuaded those who could afford it that their dip in the ocean might not end with certain death. News of those rescued by the Italian navy inevitably bled through more often than news of those who had perished. When migrants drowned, most sank without trace. Occasionally bad news of biblical proportions made it onto state television but more often than not the headlines were about the pressure on Italian and Greek islands, and their governments’ attempts to deal with those who had made the crossing.
Habid swaggered along the seafront and looked at its scars. Gaddafi had terrorised the Americans, who blew the place to bits with the help of the British. Confusingly for most Libyans, Gaddafi later set about compensating the Yanks and the Brits for his bombings, and then the US had paid reparations for theirs – fixing Benghazi before blowing it up again. It was like Mediterranean Monopoly. Madness, thought Habid, utter, incalculable, ridiculous madness. Yet the whole debacle had generated cash, and he would have some of that.
To hide something precious in a town like Benghazi was impossible. Libya’s fortunes could turn on the head of a firing pin; no alliance was worth a wink – for the nod that followed could destroy it in an instant. His papers were so important they couldn’t be entrusted to a vault or a bank where nefarious forces could bribe and insist their way to seizure. And then there was incineration. Habid was in no doubt that further air attacks and bombings were inevitable. The only question was: which country was next in the queue to blow Benghazi to bits?
And so he had sought a fireproof hiding place for his plunder. Inspired by the remarkable preservation of the Dead
Sea Scrolls, Habid’s cunning mind turned to the tide as an option. The scrolls hadn’t been concealed under the sea, but Habid imagined that was simply because there hadn’t been watertight containers back then to guarantee safety. But what better way to prevent fire damage than to submerge his papers in water?
Habid had no knowledge of the sea – he was of the sands where desert storms and tsunami-like floods could shift geography and make almost anything disappear. It was no place for a hide. Habid was a believer in history. He had made a remarkable discovery, one that would make him rich. He had taken his valuable bundle to the bay in Benghazi and asked himself what invaders don’t destroy. And it came to him: they never ruin ports, for the ports are what they use to remove the wealth from any country. They need the ports to shift the oil they guzzle from the ground. Even during the Second World War, the ports were untouched.
With glee then, Habid rolled up his scrolls, capped the ends of a watertight tube and concealed them in the one place he was convinced they would survive. Not a dead sea, but a living one, from which he would eventually extract his fortune.
Sam had met Dyer years later in the way that operatives do – by blanking one another. To begin with.
The heat had been intense, the hospitality gratuitous. A consular reception for NGO staff at a colonial retreat in the Caribbean. Enormous fans were recirculating warm air as Commonwealth subjects poured wine for guests from the old country. Sam watched his wife struggle to hold her tongue as they were lavished with canapés and plonk while the local population struggled to rebuild after yet another bloody hurricane.
Sam had been about to go on leave when Shannon had been deployed, and he’d rerouted his flight home at his own expense to get some time with her. His plan had been to swim a bit, maybe dive a little, and then eat with his wife in the evenings. Instead she had lined him up for heavy lifting, driving water bowsers around the island, chainsawing fallen trees and a healthy dose of carpentry, which, he admitted, he thoroughly enjoyed.
But it had begun with a thank you from the high commissioner on the island. Sam and Shannon were duly introduced to an eminent midget, and it seemed to Sam that the man was just lonely and craving company he could relate to, but Shannon didn’t care about his solitude among those he failed to find synergy with. Her role, as ever, was in disaster relief. She was disgusted at what she determined to be a decadent waste of money that ought to be decanted elsewhere. Sam found it mildly amusing, which earned him a frozen shoulder.
He’d seen Dyer the moment he walked through the white clapperboard door. Sam hadn’t really packed the correct attire for such a gathering, and so he stood out sufficiently for Dyer to immediately take note of him too. The spook’s broad shoulders filled out a linen sports jacket – Sam’s inflated a poorly ironed shirt, taking at least some of the bad look off it. Shannon had been defiantly unperturbed by his get-up.
“Shower of stuck-up feckers,” she’d muttered. “Do them no harm to see how workers dress when they come here to do a proper job.”
Dyer and Sam locked eyes for the briefest of moments – neither issued a twitch. The inevitable handshake elicited no betrayal of their past acquaintance, and as the boozy night carried on they pressed flesh and talked small, evading questions as was their want.
Much later Sam sat alone, feet up on a wicker chair amid sprinklers watering the thick grass – while the fresh homeless outside the fence craved libation. He’d investigated the work involved in diverting the supply and had resolved to set to it the following night. He knew it would please Shannon.
“Well?” he heard from behind.
“Mr Dyer,” Sam had replied without turning.
“I assume you’re not here on official business, lieutenant commander?”
“Nobody ever called me that,” he laughed, “and I’m a lieutenant commander no more,” said Sam.
“Sounds like we have lots to discuss.”
Dyer fell into the seat, his hulk straining the sinews of the wicker.
“I’m here by accident really,” said Sam. “I had some leave and my wife got deployed to sort out the relief programme here. What about you?”
“I’ve been given a tidy wee number for a year.”
It was soothing to hear the Northern Ireland accent. It negated the need to enunciate clearly for the benefit of comprehension.
“You must have got yourself in some more tight spots if you’re being rewarded with the Caribbean.”
“Something like that,” Dyer replied. “If you’re retired, why do you still get leave?”
“I didn’t say I was retired. Got busted. Bad behaviour,” said Sam.
“Didn’t think you were the type,” said Dyer genuinely surprised.
“Bad behaviour for good reason,” said Sam, and left it at that.
Dyer withdrew a quarter bottle of Havana Club from one of his side pockets. And then drew another from the opposite pocket.
“Half ‘un?”
“Aye,” said Sam, falling into speak he hadn’t had the luxury to use in months.
“Where’ve ye been?” asked Dyer.
“Helmand,” muttered Sam. “I’m back to a bootleg.”
“Right.” Dyer breathed in, absorbing the implied news that Sam’s fall from grace had been substantial. “Still, must be plenty of young Marines glad to have someone like you leading them about the place.”
“You know, there’s something not too bad about that side of it, but I’m getting tired. I’ve been in that kit for a long time. Most of the rest have checked out.”
“I know well,” said Dyer.
The pair appeared to be in similar places. Sam looked at the big Northern Irishman as they swigged from their dumpy bottles and took his turn to ask a question – he knew he’d be offered nothing otherwise.
“You not ready to get out? You’ve done your years, have ye not?”
“Twenty next year,” said Dyer. “I’ve a few loose ends.”
“Out here?” said Sam, asking a question without really asking a question.
“No, this is decompression.”
“Must’ve be working, judging by that tan.” Sam smiled.
“It’s not a tough station.”
“You sail?”
“Nah,” said Dyer. “Like boats though.”
“My wife, Shannon, she seems to have a fair bit lined up for me, but I’ve a plan that might earn me a pass for a day and maybe we’ll get on the water.”
“Dead on,” said Dyer, a phrase Sam hadn’t heard for a long time.
“I need a hand to do something that might land you in bother with that wee ambassador, but.”
“He’s only a commissioner, and he’s a gobshite.”
“Right, well. See if you can find us a set of spanners or shifters and we might get to go sailing tomorrow.”
By night he heard Alea scream, which was an achievement given the noise and banging of the boat as she sailed, and the distance between the cockpit and the forecabin. He assumed she was yelling in her sleep. It disturbed him because he imagined the children could hear her too, but they didn’t mention it.
She and Sam had adopted a not-uncomfortable peace. Most of the time he just dozed as she sat in the cockpit and read voraciously through his stockpile of paperbacks. There was no deliberation, she simply peeled the next one off the shelf in the order they were stacked. He wondered how much she was able to understand and noted her incredible appetite for knowledge. Perhaps there was no better way to learn English – to prepare for life in the west, to be able to hold conversation, to better understand what was going on.
Occasionally she took a break and skipped up onto the deck, gripped the stays and gazed into the warm breeze, her hair blowing out behind her. Barefoot and lithe, Sam banished the flutter of a thought as he watched her, guilt edging it away. She only did it when he was asleep, and she always adopted the same pose. Sam often caught her as he stumbled out of a dream.
“You turn your face to the sun a lot,” he said, not
really intending to verbalise his thought.
“Mmm.”
He couldn’t work out whether she was annoyed at having been caught. “It’s like you miss the sun on your face,” he tried, happy not to have been ignored.
She turned her head to her shoulder, her back to him, in deliberation.
“It has been long time,” she said.
“Why? The one thing Libya has, besides oil, is sun.”
“Not all places,” she said, her tone hardening.
Sam had a choice: pursue the dialogue or let it drift. He’d never learned to take the easy option.
“Why, where have you been hanging out?”
She turned, and the stare came back. Alea fixed him for a moment, then rotated again to the falling sun.
“Hiding from tribesmen.”
“What tribesmen?”
“Any of them. All of them.”
“Why?”
“We do what you do. Protect ow-er child. Keeping her from fighting.”
“The Spring?”
She stiffened again. “There is no Spring before your planes arrive-ed. Is small revolt. Benghazi only. Then you take-ed chance to remove-ed Gaddafi.”
“Will you quit with this you and your country carry on. I told you before – I am from Ireland. I am not American.”
“You speak both sides of mouth,” she stated, not inviting comment or rebuttal. “You fight for Great Britain.”
“I fight for no one. Not any more.”
“So is true. You have been army.”
“Not really army.”
“Then what?”
“I was in the navy.”
Then she said something curious. “Why not have tattoo?”
“Tattoo?”
“You not have,” she said, and Sam remembered she had seen him pretty much naked, which meant she had seen the scars – which perhaps explained her conviction that he had been in the military. “I believe men in navy have tattoo.”
