The Catch: A Novel

by Taylor Stevens

  Munroe pushed the propeller into the water.

  The engine’s roar was a scream to the quiet, and if someone had been waiting for her, he was now fully aware that she had returned and was on the move.

  LIGHTS BLINKED OUT over the water, and with them Munroe kept a steady distance from the shore; hugged the curves of the coast north toward Malindi in a patterned hum and rise and fall that once again drew long in the night, allowing the rage and violence that had followed in the wake of Sami’s death to feast and fester and scheme into threads of possibility and action.

  Taking the boat to Malindi would eat time. The faster plan would be to wait for dawn and find a quiet place not far up shore where she could scuttle the vessel—wouldn’t be the first time she’d sunk thousands of dollars off an African coastline—but that would give Sami’s killers nothing to play with. This way she would draw them away from Mombasa, provide an opportunity to mask the trail, and buy the opportunity to sort through options.

  The same landmarks that Sami had pointed out those few days prior came into view shortly before dawn when the sky was purple and shifting through color and the small dots that were fishermen’s skiffs or pirogues could be seen as blemishes on the water. Guided by the clues and working through trial and error, she eventually reached a small cove where the local fishermen congregated and the slow hustle of selling off the early-morning catch to households and restaurateurs had already begun.

  The beach was spattered with small wooden boats dragged up and tied off, a miniature armada resting on the sand while the bigger vessels anchored in deeper water. The sun had already crested the horizon, and between the shouts and the cries of the merchants on shore, seabirds dove and squawked in a fight over fish offal.

  Munroe neared the largest of the boats, a fiberglass V-hull nearly as long as hers with an improvised tarp under which five fishermen in cutoff pants, either bare-chested or wearing torn T-shirts, tended to nets and lounged in the developing shade. Munroe called out a hello in English and said, “I’m looking for the owner of your boat.”

  All of the men had already turned to watch her approach, but in response to her shout the youngest stood, and arms and torso ripped with definition, leaned against the side in her direction. “Why?” he said.

  “I have a boat to sell.”

  He smiled and his head ticked toward her. “That one?”

  Munroe returned the smile, sweeping her hand toward the bow.

  “How much do you want?”

  “Are you the owner?”

  “I’m the renter,” he said. “But I want to buy my own.”

  His English was perfect, melodic and educated and proper with the British history that was part of the country’s accent, an English more common in the big city, not the broken fragments of Sami’s or the pidgin of the hotel staff, and she adjusted her own grammar accordingly. “Together with the engine and the fuel it’s worth at least ten thousand U.S. dollars,” she said. “I want five thousand.”

  He whistled. “I’ll give you five hundred.”

  She laughed. “Let me talk to someone with money.”

  “Six hundred,” he said.

  Still smiling, she shook her head and said, “Do you carry a knife?”

  He threw his arms wide. “I’m a fisherman! What a question.”

  “Sell it to me.”

  “How much will you pay?”

  “How much is it worth?”

  “Eight thousand shillings,” he said.

  “I’ll give you four thousand.”

  “Deal,” he said, and motioned her in closer, and when her boat had neared and she’d cut the engine, he used an improvised gaff with a cloth wrapped around the end to pull the boats together. His knife had a six-inch blade, clean and sharp, pointed and narrow and better suited for paring than hand-to-hand combat; was holstered in leather that had been resewn several times; and was worth far less than Munroe had agreed to, but it was a blade all the same, a weapon until she could return to collect those she’d left behind in Mombasa.

  With the transaction complete, Munroe asked for the number of his boat’s owner, and he fished around by his feet. Held up the stub of a blade-sharpened pencil. “You have paper?”

  She pulled out her phone, punched through the controls to insert a new contact. “One better,” she said.

  He laughed again and recited a number and a name. Munroe entered the information. “A woman?” she said.

  He motioned toward the other boats anchored just offshore. “She owns five of these.”

  “Is she difficult?”

  “Of course,” he said. “She does good business.”

  Munroe gave him a mock salute and he let loose the gaff, and when she no longer had an audience, the mask of her smile faded and the rage returned.

  Another kilometer up the coast, where the shore was emptier, Munroe made the call. The woman was pure business and her questions were articulated with a solid knowledge of nautical terminology; she knew exactly what she wanted and what she could work with, and when Munroe had satisfied those concerns, the woman described the large concrete pier that Munroe could see from where she now floated and arranged to meet there in half an hour.

  Lack of papers were going to be the biggest hurdle to the sale. Anyone who was anyone or who knew anyone could find a way to them, but even so, the buyer would play up the issue as a way to undercut the price. And that was okay. Munroe needed the cash, but selling the boat was more about misdirection and a way to keep the tracker on the move.

  CHAPTER 15

  In the wait for the buyer Munroe dialed Amber Marie; held through ten, fifteen, of the irritating pulse tones while the phone in Djibouti rang long and went unanswered. There was no voice mail or caller ID on the other end, no digital footprint to provide notice that she’d attempted contact, so Munroe let the ringing continue.

  Long past the thirtieth tone Amber finally answered, breathing the energy of action, of having been awake for a while, from being on the move and throwing parts of a plan into motion.

  “Have you found any updates?” Munroe asked.

  “Yes,” Amber said, and there was triumph in her answer. “As of late last night or early this morning, the Favorita anchored off the coast of Garacad.”

  The detail was so opposite of what Munroe had anticipated that she drew a sharp inhale and said, “Garacad? You’re sure?”

  “Yeah,” Amber said, and a smile was conveyed so clearly through her voice that Munroe could see it spread across her face—as if after having been cut off from Leo completely, news of any kind, no matter how horrible, created the same sense of excitement as a promise that Leo was alive and coming home. Oblivious to the caution and reticence on Munroe’s end, Amber rushed on.

  “There’s not a lot of detail just yet,” she said. “The ship is anchored about two kilometers offshore—typical—crew still on board, about twenty pirates on as well. So far they’re using skiffs to ferry supplies in and out.”

  In a bid to clarify what was surely a mistake, Munroe said, “Did the Favorita finally turn up on the AIS? Garacad is pretty far north of where the hijacking occurred. It could be a different vessel.”

  “Still nothing on the AIS, but the ship is definitely ours. Somalia Report broke the news. They had a couple of images and I compared them against everything we have. They’re grainy, but it’s the Favorita, no doubt about that.”

  What should have been progress created confusion instead.

  Somalia Report was one of the leading sources of information within Somalia and, like Al-Jazeera was to al-Qaeda in the Middle East, an outlet as likely to be contacted by hijackers to report what they wanted disseminated as to report on them; a website that Munroe had repeatedly visited over the past few days and not one whose reporting she could dismiss lightly no matter how little it all made sense. She said, “How did they explain the weapons in the hold?”

  “They didn’t.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Nope.”r />
  Munroe replayed the attack on the ship, challenged her own senses, her own experience, rewound and saw through less cynical and jaded eyes, but no matter how she cut it, those weapons in the hold and Leo’s reaction to their discovery had been real.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” Amber said, and her tone had a bite.

  Munroe didn’t press. Amber had never wanted to believe Leo would involve himself in gunrunning, and still didn’t want to believe it. She said, “What about ransom?”

  “They want three million dollars for the release of ship and crew.”

  The payoff demand brought another wave of mental dissonance. This was normal and the normalcy was jarring and frustrating: The normalcy was wrong. If the ship had been taken as a way to get to the weapons, Mogadishu would have been a better bet for a port of call on its hijacked voyage—or any of the port cities controlled by the Islamic militancy, Al-Shabaab—or for that matter, anywhere along the coast where the hijackers could offload what they’d come for. If the Favorita had been targeted for the weapons, it wouldn’t be in Garacad right now under the roving eye of Somalia Report correspondents while the hijackers demanded a payment of at least triple what the ship was worth.

  “What about you?” Amber said. “Have you heard anything?”

  Other than possibly salving her ego after Amber had written off her account of the hijacking, no good could come of telling her of Sami’s murder or that Munroe had something the hijackers wanted. She said, “The people I’m talking to have better access than Somalia Report. It’s just a matter of how long it will take to get them to tell me what they know.”

  “Well, we know where the ship is,” Amber said, “and we know what the hijackers want. We can work with that.”

  “What’s the status on the hostages?”

  “They claim to have already killed two.”

  At least this was a detail that Munroe could correlate with her experience on the Favorita.

  Somali piracy had long since moved away from the methods of the rogue fishermen turned criminals who rarely deliberately harmed or killed their hostages. In its current incarnation, piracy was a calculated, ruthless business where hostages as pawns were routinely tortured and executed. But even so, the brutality, no matter how often threatened, was, barring an adrenaline- or drug-induced accident, typically saved until negotiations stalled and the pirates needed a way to amp up demands. Which meant the two dead had probably been killed during the firefight, and if that was the case, then they were part of Leo’s team, not the ship’s crew. But Munroe kept this to herself.

  There were logical explanations for why the presence of the weapons would have been kept quiet, but there were bigger details missing from the story. “What about armed guards,” Munroe said. “Any mention of them having been on board? Because if these guys were the first to take an armed ship, they’d be all over that, gloating, maybe even exaggerating how big of an army they were up against. The news would be everywhere.”

  There was a long pause on the other end, and then with her speech slowed slightly, as if her thoughts had tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and this was the first Amber had seen of the incongruence, she said, “There wasn’t any mention of our team, either.”

  Munroe tried to find a fit for this new piece of information and couldn’t, and when she didn’t speak, Amber, almost as if betraying a confidence and certainly betraying the reason she’d stayed on the phone this long, said, “Natan and I are preparing to drive down to see if we can possibly negotiate the team’s release.”

  Munroe ran a palm over her face and then looked up toward the sky. “Do you have resources?”

  “Not three million dollars.”

  “Do you even have a hundred thousand?”

  Amber whispered, “No.”

  “How far do you think you’ll get?”

  “Through Somaliland at least, maybe to Bosaso.”

  “That’s kind of out of your way.”

  “It’s our best bet for finding someone willing to supply us with a military escort.”

  “You’re going to need it.”

  “We could really use an interpreter,” Amber said.

  If she’d been asked even a day earlier, Munroe might have jumped at the opportunity for no other reason than the adrenaline charge and the linguistic and cultural challenges a drive through Somalia would provide. But Sami’s death had changed her focus, had given her a private war to fight. Whoever had killed him was going to pay a price. She would find the murderer and she would take revenge. And although her goal and Amber’s goal were intrinsically linked to the Favorita, Amber’s plan was nothing more than a way to be in motion, to provide the illusion of doing something, anything, under the guise of controlling a situation that was chaos.

  “How long till you get your resources together?” Munroe said.

  “A week, maybe. I’ll pay for your flight if you come with us.”

  “That’s kind of a hollow offer, don’t you think? I was due a flight back anyway simply for boarding the Favorita.”

  “So in addition to the flight, what would you want?”

  “I don’t know,” Munroe said. “Let me think about it.”

  “Does that mean you’ll come?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Okay, think about it.”

  “It’s a huge risk for not much benefit,” Munroe said. “Especially if you’re planning to carry the cash down with you.”

  “We’ll use hawala.”

  “Fine. So let’s say you manage to get all the way to Garacad. And let’s say that by some hypothetical miracle you manage to sweet-talk the local clan elders into getting you a sit-down with a negotiator or even the guy running the show. And let’s say that miracle expands and you’re actually able to negotiate a release. What happens when they start playing chicken and won’t release the entire team—and you know they’ll do that. What are you going to do then? Take Leo and leave the others?”

  Amber didn’t answer, so Munroe pressed on.

  “Let’s say you beat all the odds. You get down there, you negotiate, and you pay for the release of your entire team. What’s your exit strategy? You, as the negotiator, are right there. You and the cash and the team have no backup anywhere else. The world’s eyes aren’t on you. There’s no outside pressure to force them to deliver on their promise, nothing to guarantee that after you hand over the money you aren’t all shot right then and there. Or on the way back out by another gang of thieves.”

  “What else is there to do?” Amber finally whispered. “There’s no insurance contract. The Favorita is a couple of voyages shy of being broken for scrap, no one’s going to try to ransom it, and you know as well as I do that nobody but the crew’s families give a crap about them. I can’t just sit around wishing and hoping that something will save him—that’s its own kind of death.”

  And that was a point Munroe couldn’t argue and wouldn’t even if she could. Amber’s plan was stupid, but at least it was a plan instead of waiting for magic to happen.

  “You’re willing to risk everything to save him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even death.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he worth it?”

  “That’s a horrible question,” Amber said.

  “You should think about it.”

  “Just because you’re pissed that he forced you to go with him?”

  “Maybe I see a side of him that you can’t. Maybe this is fate sparing you from something worse by him down the line.”

  “I’m finished talking about it,” Amber said.

  “All right then, you should try calling.”

  “What?”

  “Go through Somalia Report for information,” Munroe said. “Find out if the hijackers are even willing to deal with you before you make the trip. If they think you’re bringing money, they might be able to guarantee your safety all the way down, and when you get there is when you tell them you’re wor
king with hawala instead. At least it gets you a safe one-way ride. You could also try forcing their hand and get them to bring the team inland. Get them to a larger city in exchange for the payment, then you’d have a better shot at making it out of there—even more so if you were able to secure a military escort in advance.”

  If it was possible to hear mental wheels spinning, then that was the sound of Amber’s silence. “Talk to me before you go,” Munroe said. “I have people asking questions and it will take me about that long to get some answers. At least this way if you decide to traipse off on your Hail Mary mission, you’ll have better information on what you’re up against. You have a pen and paper?”

  “Yeah,” Amber said. “Why?”

  Munroe glanced toward the road that followed the coast. A blue Land Rover Discovery had parked at the base of the pier and a portly woman wearing a bright green-and-black-pattern muumuu stepped from the passenger side. The man who’d done the driving, who also appeared to play the role of bodyguard, stepped around beside her, and together they strolled down the pier.

  “Here’s a way to reach me,” Munroe said. She recited her number for Amber, and then said, “I’ve gotta go. If you don’t hear from me before you head out, call me.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Munroe shut the phone and raised her hand in a wave for attention. The woman spotted her and swaggered slowly toward the nearest rail and, once within shouting distance, leaned out over the water and called, “This the boat for sale?”

  “This is the one,” Munroe yelled, and the woman pointed down the coast toward another boat headed their way. “My man is coming to check her.”

  This was the start of a negotiation as predictable as it would be tedious, part of the drawn-out haggling innate to a culture that placed little value on the concept of time; and in the wait, as the approaching boat grew larger and the sun rose higher and began to heat the air, the conversation with Amber, the proposal of driving from Djibouti to Garacad, tumbled around inside her head.