by Finn Óg
“Pier-haps in past,” Waleed grunted, which Sam took as a reference to his vintage.
“Not army, though.”
“Intelligence?”
“No,” said Sam firmly.
Waleed sat quietly for a while. “Sailor.” He nodded to himself knowing he had put the jigsaw of Sam’s previous conversation together.
Sam said nothing.
“Special sailor, pier-haps.” The name of a unit was on the tip of Waleed’s tongue, but it just wouldn’t roll off.
He was quiet for a while and Sam had no intention of jumping in.
“You said I could help you,” said Sam, happy to divert the flow of conversation. “What can I help you with?”
Waleed took a deep breath as if preparing to tell an irritating story. “I have prisoner. He is idiot.”
Sam laughed aloud.
“He is also dangerous. He is corruption but was not always. He is involve-ed.”
“Involved in what?”
“People traffick,” said Waleed, as if that much ought to have been clear to Sam by now.
This sounded like good news.
“He is also police officer.”
“Right,” said Sam, slightly surprised.
“I am not knowing what to do with him,” said Waleed, as if confessing a weakness to Sam. “He is too stupid to organ-ise. But he has boss – also police. Bad, bad man.”
“Ok,” said Sam, “and how do you think I can help you with this man?”
“I think-ed he can hel-ep you.”
“How?”
“Am think he can hel-ep you find traffick gang.”
“That sounds like a hell of a reach,” said Sam. “I’m not looking for any old people trafficker, I’m looking for one particular man.”
Waleed turned and smiled.
“This is strange, Sam Ireland. I am think we are look for same man.”
Chapter 23
“Your boyfriend’s a dickhead,” Áine seethed as she came in the door from work.
Sinead had arrived at the flat they shared just ahead of her.
“What?”
“Sam. He’s landed us right in it again.”
“What’re you talking about? Have you been speaking to him? And by the bloody way – he’s not my boyfriend,” she said with unusual force before softening. “Is he ok?”
“I’m sure he’s fine. It’s me you should be worried about.”
“Why? Will ye tell me what’s happened?”
“I’ve been sacked,” Áine said.
“What?”
“And hacked. Sacked and hacked. Well, hacked first, sacked after that.”
“Áine, for the love of—will you just calm down and tell me what’s after happening?”
Áine accepted she was making no sense, bailed into their sole sofa and began a measured rant. “So I get in from lunch and plug-in at my workstation and the whole fucking system is going cracked. Someone had proxied into my terminal and was raping the whole network.”
“Well, that’s a security issue, isn’t it?”
Sinead knew very little about tech firms but Áine had been headhunted half a dozen times by the bluest, chippiest firms in Dublin, so she imagined their firewalls, or whatever, would be fairly robust.
“Eh, duh,” said Áine, still seething.
“Don’t do that.”
Very little really annoyed Sinead, but that expression made her mad. Áine relented a little.
“I plugged my laptop into the network to help your … colleague?”
“Colleague is grand.”
“And I started trying to ping that phone again – the one that went dark in Egypt.”
“Right,” said Sinead, not understanding what all this had to do with anything.
“Then I went to get a blaa.”
“Thought you were off white bread.”
“What the actual fuck?”
“Sorry, but it was you who brought up your lunch.”
“I nearly did get sick when I got back. The whole system was compromised, not just my personal laptop.”
“And you think it’s something to do with looking for this phone? For Sam?”
“I don’t think it, sis, I know it. Our head of information security shut down the network – which is a major fucking call for an organisation like ours. It was down for one hundred and forty minutes. Nobody could do any work. Do you know how much that costs?”
“How much?”
“Fuck, Sinead, I don’t know how much but it’s a hell of a bloody lot, alright?”
“Alright,” said Sinead, hands up at the onslaught.
“And the security team analyse what the source of the information attack was – and guess where they land?”
“At your laptop.”
“At what I was looking for on my laptop – which was a phone – in a desert – in Egypt, for your bloody—”
“He’s not my fucking boyfriend!” Sinead all but screamed.
That shocked Áine. Sinead’s mouth was over ninety per cent cleaner than her sister’s, so such outbursts tended to have a silencing quality.
“Sorry,” she muttered.
“Who would have wanted to know about this?” Sinead tried to bring her own temperature down.
“They say it’s at, like, government level.”
“What? Serious?”
“Serious.”
“Because you tried to find this phone.”
“Seems so. But, like, what do we even know about what Sam’s doing or who owns this phone? Look where we ended up last time. We were being tracked by a network of fucking paedophiles.”
Sinead hauled air into her. That was true. Sam had sorted it all out in the end but there were a few days the previous year when it looked like they were in genuine danger.
“I don’t know,” said Sinead. “But before, last time, that was partly my fault. That job came about as a result of a referral from me.”
“Not this one, though. This time it’s to do with that woman and kid he plucked out of some Arabian sea.”
“I’m really sorry, sis. Will this be a mark against you? Will you be able to get another job?”
“I dunno,” said Áine. “It depends what the fuck is going on and who’s looking for what. It depends on what your—” she paused and reconsidered her terminology, “what Sam’s got mixed up in.”
Four thousand miles away Sam remained dangerously unaware of the interest his exercise in emotional distraction was generating.
“Why do you think I am looking for this police officer you have taken prisoner?”
Waleed had turned to face the road once more.
“You arrive-ed in desert from Jordan.”
“You checked passport control?”
“Of course.”
“But that’s not got anything to do with anything.”
“You are tracking GPS, yes?”
“Sort of.” His head rocked from shoulder to shoulder. “Yes,” he then conceded, “trying to, anyway.”
“We are finding GPS in hotel in Taba, yes?”
“Possibly,” said Sam, who suspected the device was the one he was looking for but had no confirmation.
“This GPS, it was update on computer.”
“When?” asked Sam excitedly.
“Two days maybe.”
“Two days ago?”
“Yes. Maybe.”
“But that still doesn’t mean it is the device I am looking for.”
Waleed realised there were missing elements of his story that needed to be relayed.
“My prisoner – the police officer – he is sent by superior to desert for people trafficking.”
“Right …” said Sam, trying to follow the logic.
“He has same GPS. Same one. I take from him when he is arrest.”
Sam’s mind was up and running and jumping over shit but clattering most of the hurdles along the way. “I don’t follow,” was all he said.
“I make my men take policeman GPS an
d mobile phone to the east. I keep-ed prisoner at interrogation cell.”
Sam sat silent.
“I order men destroy GPS and mobile phone, but they sell it. Bastards,” he spat.
Sam decided to disregard the elements he didn’t need to understand – like why Waleed had sent the kit east and why he wanted it destroyed. Instead he focused on what seemed relevant to his own job.
“If they sold it, how did you find the GPS again?”
“Is luck. You trace-ed to hotel in Taba. You tell me. Then is luck. Not important.”
Sam shrugged. If Waleed said it wasn’t important, Sam wasn’t about to argue.
“But why do you think your prisoner is the man I am looking for?”
Waleed thought for a moment.
“GPS is same.”
“Similar,” Sam corrected, reluctant to pick holes in Waleed’s argument.
“Is one you come look for or not?”
“I can find out if you let me have my phone back.”
Waleed fished in his back pocket and threw Sam his phone. Sam tapped in his code and took a photo of the GPS sitting on the dash between them. He sent it to Sinead with accompanying text: Urgent. Please ask Alea if this is the device. Ta.
Sinead’s phone pinged as she stared at her sister, not knowing what to say. She took it out of her pocket, saw the sender’s name and went into the kitchen to read it.
What’s going on, Sam? Áine just got fired for trying to track that phone.
While she was waiting she sent another message to the manager of the refuge where Alea and Sadiqah were staying.
Hi. Please ask Alea if this is the right device. She will understand. Let me know asap. Thanks hon.
Sam’s neck muscles tightened at the response he received. He hadn’t expected anything to come through so quickly. He tried to understand what it meant – why would Áine have been sacked?
“Waleed, is there anyone else who could be tracking the policeman’s mobile phone?”
Waleed darted him a look.
“How you know this?” he barked. Tiye had asked him exactly the same thing.
“There was a man, in the sea, the night of the rescue. It’s complicated but he gave me the mobile phone number of the man behind the trafficking gang. My friend, in Ireland, she was trying to track the number.”
Waleed went quiet and Sam filled the gap.
“She has been sacked from her job, which seems very weird.”
“Someone else is tracking this phone,” Waleed said. “I do not know who.”
The two men ticked over their own ends of the same story. Nothing appeared clear.
Fifteen minutes of pointless musing was interrupted by a message to Sam’s phone. Charity appeared again on the screen.
She says, yes, it’s the same device. Sadiqah recognises the missing button.
Sam snatched up the GPS again and saw what he’d paid no attention to before. The rubber cover on the top right button had been torn off.
“It’s the same device,” he said to Waleed.
“What?”
“The GPS. It is almost definitely the one used by the trafficking gang.”
Waleed slapped the wheel, happy at the breakthrough.
Sam’s phone pinged: Charity. You need to tell me what’s going on, Sam.
He started writing. I promise you, Sinead, I will. As soon as I know. Really sorry about Áine. Will try to fix any damage done. Thank you for this. Sam.
“Gamble,” said Waleed.
“What?”
“Was gamble, no?”
“I suppose it was,” Sam acknowledged, distracted.
Waleed was now convinced that Big Suit was the man Sam was looking for. In the back of his mind a solution was presenting itself as to what he might do with the big fool.
“What you tell me about man you look for – the traffick man?”
Sam thought for a moment, thinking about how Alea had described Habid.
“He is small, Libyan and cunning.”
Waleed’s hands gripped the wheel until his knuckles went white. His jaw muscle flexed through his skin.
“Does that sound like your prisoner? What’s he like?” asked Sam.
Waleed was quiet for a moment, then sighed. “He is big, Egyptian and stupid.”
That explained Waleed’s white knuckles.
There was silence for a long while until Waleed shifted gear to deal with a gentle incline.
“Is possible you speak to prisoner. GPS is strong link. This device,” he gestured to the unit on the dashboard, “is not for vehicle. Is for desert. We speak to him, we see where is going.” Waleed nodded, trying to build confidence in himself.
Sam kindled a gentle hope too. Waleed was right. The GPS in front of him wasn’t for mapping roads – it was for tracking across oceans or open land. It was ideal for, say, desert-border crossings – the kind Alea had described. He lifted it and gestured to Waleed – do you mind? Waleed shrugged.
Sam had seen similar units on boats when he’d been a teenager but had never used one properly. It gave a track, a spidery line of where the device had been, and offered coordinates. It seemed that on land anyone holding the device could retrace their footsteps accurately. The advantage for Sam was that it told him where the device had been in recent months. He had next to no power left in his phone. It would blink itself to sleep shortly, but he looked at Waleed’s smartphone in its holder.
“Waleed, can I use your phone?”
“No,” he replied.
Sam felt berated, as if put in his place. Waleed noted the effect.
“You are not prisoner, Meester Sam, but I cannot give you phone. You are suspect still.”
“Ok. If I give you some GPS coordinates, can you punch them into your phone?”
“We are in Sinai. Signal here very, very bad.”
“GPS might work,” Sam pressed.
He was keen Waleed felt they were working together.
The vehicle pulled up. There was no hard shoulder, but then there was no traffic either. Sam read out the most frequently used coordinates from the GPS. Waleed tapped in the numbers and held the phone up for a few minutes. He turned his head towards Sam, surprise on his face.
“Libya,” he said.
“Bingo,” said Sam. “Let’s go talk to your prisoner.”
Big Suit had taken to removing all his clothes by day and replacing them at night. It was his only means of regulating his body temperature. Daytime, the sun outside was splitting the rocks, by night it was freezing. He was lying with his upper body on the inside lining of his jacket in his soiled, moist underpants when the door opened and his old friend appeared. Big Suit scrambled to his feet, embarrassed at the way he was turned out. He automatically cupped his genitals and tried to hide his man boobs with his arms.
“Get dressed,” Waleed barked.
Another man followed Waleed into the holding area. He was slightly above average size, fit looking with Western outdoor clothing. His face had the weather of a thousand sandstorms. Big Suit could tell he’d never seen the cell before because he gazed around the surroundings registering every detail. He was deeply tanned, so Big Suit was surprised when he spoke in English to Waleed.
“Is this where you might have imprisoned me?”
“There is still time, Meester Sam,” Waleed replied wryly.
Big Suit had no idea what they were saying.
Stinking trousers hoisted, Big Suit stood to something like attention. He’d lost track of how long it had been since he’d seen Waleed.
“This man is here to ask you some questions. If you want to get out of here, then answer him honestly and quickly.”
“Yes, Waleed,” said Big Suit eagerly.
Waleed stared at the big goon and wondered what he might do with the secret information he had miraculously stumbled upon if Waleed chose to release him. His lurking hope was that the Irishman might take him away to find this trafficking gang, and that Big Suit might somehow disappear in the process
.
“Why does he call you by your first name?”
Waleed frowned as if the memory pained him. “We trained together at the academy, many years ago. Our lives have been very different since.”
Sam turned to the captive. “Is this yours?” He held up the GPS.
Waleed snapped out a one-word translation. Big Suit turned to Sam and shook his head, talking in Arabic.
“He says no.” Waleed listened while he spoke. “He says his boss give it to him. He says it taken from desert rat they arrested at hotel in Alexandria.”
Sam was interested. “Describe him.”
“He is little man. He is wearing Bedouin clothes. He is dark, darker than most Egyptians—”
“Where is he from?” Sam interjected.
Big Suit seized the chance to show willingness.
“Libya,” Waleed confirmed with an arched eyebrow. “And he is injured.”
This was news to Sam. Alea had made no mention of an injury.
“How is he injured?”
Big Suit’s eyes fell to the floor, almost ashamed. He spoke defensively, and through his former friend spilled his guts.
“He has a foot injury and some other problems,” Waleed said, as Big Suit gestured at his nether region.
Waleed then asked a few questions to which Big Suit shrugged in acceptance and admission. Waleed nodded knowingly.
“The injuries happened during the interrogation. This fat fool has grown to enjoy questioning people with tools.”
Sam caught the gist. He imagined the interrogation had happened after Alea and Sadiqah had been sent to sea.
“Where is this Libyan now?”
“I do not know,” Waleed relayed.
“Why did you have his GPS?”
“His boss sent him to Sinai. He was to collect boat for sending people to sea,” Waleed explained. “The GPS was given because he never been here before, but he is too stupid to use.”
“Where were you going to collect a boat in the desert?” asked Sam, but the answer was slowly dawning on him.
“Suez,” repeated Waleed. “Then his boss call him to send him to Nuweiba instead.”
Sam’s neck was bristling.
“So you and your boss arrested this man – this rat – for people trafficking. And instead of charging him, you decided to get in on it?”
