by John Case
It was six flights of metal steps up to the bridge. Khalid, a heavy smoker, gasped.
They found the first officer on the bridge, drinking coffee and tapping away at a computer. Shaking Wilson’s hand with a firm grip, he wore a big smile, showing large white teeth. Struggling to find enough English, the officer explained that he was in charge of the cargo, of which they were technically a part.
Zero asked a question in Arabic.
The first officer looked at Zero as if he hadn’t noticed him before and now that he’d focused, didn’t like what he saw. A fleeting expression of distaste came and went, followed by a dismissive shake of the head. “Maybe two hours,” he said in English.
Wilson’s bodyguards were placed in Spare Officer Cabin #3; Wilson in Spare Officer Cabin #4.
“Not bad,” Khalid said, as the seaman opened the door on a utilitarian space. “Look, TV.”
“Only Turkish videos,” said the seaman who’d escorted them. “Facilities down hall. You need, you go now, then you stay here until someone get you.” He held forth an admonishing finger. He ushered Wilson down the hall toward his cabin and repeated the advice with exactly the same intonation.
Wilson surveyed the space – bed, sink, mirror, built-in wardrobe and chest of drawers, TV, CD player – then stretched out on the bunk. There was something cell-like about it, although it did have a window.
When a container settled onto the deck, there was not much noise, but he felt it. The ship shuddered beneath the thin mattress, reminding him of similar moments in prison when gates slammed shut, or thick electronically controlled doors thudded to a close.
Because he had never been on a ship before, Wilson would have liked to watch the mechanics of its departure. He would also have enjoyed exploring the vessel itself. And then, too, he wanted a cigarette.
Instead, he was required to wait, but that was something he was good at. Whatever normal impatience he might once have had, prison had obliterated. In an interval such as this, in the absence of any real tension, he was free of yearning.
He pulled from his wallet the computer-printed photograph of Irina and looked at her for a moment. It was small, just a little larger than a postage stamp, small enough that it did not need to be folded. It fit easily into one of the slots in his wallet intended for credit cards. He knew from experience how destructive repeated folding could be – even to a letter, let alone an image.
And this image was not even of good quality, printed out as it was from a Kinko’s computer onto ordinary paper. He had cut Irina’s picture from a gallery of Ukrainian girls (thirty-two to the page) all looking for an American suitor, all smiling.
The women were not looking for love. He knew that. They were looking for a ticket. A ticket out.
He had selected Irina on the basis of a thumb-sized image of mediocre quality, and yet, as he looked at her face, some generosity of spirit shone through. He had e-mailed her twice through the auspices of ukrainebrides.org, which acted as a broker and an intermediary. It solicited memberships, the cost calibrated to the number of women you could contact. It published pictures and biographical notes on the available girls. It outlined and enforced the proper steps of courtship, from the exchange of letters, to the delivery of chocolates and flowers, all of which might one day culminate in a “romantic visit.” Ukrainebrides would also arrange temporary visas for prenuptial visits and, eventually, marriage ceremonies.
Or one might follow a more direct route, signing on for a “romance tour,” during which an interested man might attend, in locales from Yalta to Kiev, parties at which fifteen to twenty “suitors” would roam a crowd of a hundred available women.
Wilson was following the traditional “courtship” route, starting with the exchange of letters. His first e-mail contained a brief description of himself as the well-off thirty-year-old businessman Francisco d’Anconia, currently in the import/export trade. Her reply, demure and hesitant, told him she worked as a waitress in a coffee shop in Odessa. She lived with her parents and two sisters. Although he reminded himself that her halting language was due to the linguistic inadequacy of the translator, and not childlike innocence, it still charmed him.
His second message was more of a love letter, praising her beauty, setting forth his own desire for “someone to share my life with.” This was true. After, he did not want to be alone. He’d spent enough time alone. After, he wanted to share his life with a woman. He wanted a family. Her reply was an outpouring of poetic longing made all the more touching by the fractured syntax.
He returned the photograph to his wallet. The chance of meeting a worthy lifemate through a commercial matchmaker called ukrainebrides.org would be the equivalent of hitting the lottery. He knew that.
On the other hand, he didn’t believe in coincidence. Was it only chance that placed him on the Marmara Queen – which was taking him and his drums of molasses to within a few miles of Irina’s home?
As he punched up the pillows and kicked off his shoes and let his eyes fall closed, Irina’s smiling face remained in his field of vision. He fell asleep in the soft envelope of imagined domestic bliss.
*
The vibration woke him, a powerful thrum. For a moment, he was alarmed. The sensation seemed to be coming from within him, a destructive resonance. When he realized what it was – the ship’s engines had started – he laughed at himself. A few minutes later, he heard the clanking of the anchor chains as they were winched aboard.
They were under way.
It wasn’t long before a chirpy little guy rapped on the door. The man had been sent by the first officer to give the promised tour. He was the third officer, he told them, and his name was Hasan. He smiled, disarmingly, showing two gold teeth front and center. “This is a very fine ship. Hasan is happy to show you around.”
First, the lifeboats. Khalid scratched his head and frowned, eyeing the distance from the boats to the water. “Hasan can promise you these will not be necessary.”
Zero was selected to model the life jacket, giggling as Hasan tightened the straps.
They reviewed the location of fire extinguishers and Hasan demonstrated how to use one.
Safety issues dispensed with, they were shown around the galley, the dining room, and then the game room. Khalid’s eyes lit up at this spartan area – boasting dartboard, chess set, foosball, and Ping-Pong table.
All the time, the officer peppered them with details about the ship. He showed them the bridge, with its view to the horizon above a deck crowded with containers, then took them down to the engine room, a vast and immaculate space, with huge brass pistons pumping away. It smelled heavily of oil.
Back on deck, Hasan led them to a kind of alleyway between the containers, where it was possible to walk to the bow. If they wanted to do this, they must first inform him and report back when they returned.
At the rail, they looked down at the chop and churn of the water. It was a cold, damp day and the sight of the roiling sea made Wilson uneasy. Under them, the ship moved as if it were alive.
“It require more than one kilometer to stop the ship,” Hasan said, “so don’t falling overboard.” Zero instinctively shrank away from the rail, as Khalid translated.
“Is two days to Istanbul, one day in port there, and then another three days to Odessa. You don’t get off in Istanbul?”
Wilson nodded. “We don’t have visas for that.”
“Hasan regrets. A great city.”
Wilson nodded again.
“Is it possible to check e-mail?” Wilson asked.
“Oh yes. Hasan gives you half hour per day, this is okay?”
Wilson smiled and raised his arms at this unexpected generosity and Hasan volleyed back his golden smile.
“The best time you come after dinner, yes? But,” he cautioned, “computer work from satellite. Sometimes signal good, sometimes not so good.” He shrugged. “Hasan cannot guarantee.”
Zero and Khalid were soon bored and spent almost all of their time in t
he game room playing foosball. For Wilson, after all those years in Supermax, boredom did not exist. He easily fell into the rhythm of being at sea: the air, the gulls, the vast expanse of water, the regular meals, his daily walk to the bow in the canyon amid the containers.
He liked the bow, where it was quiet. If he looked over the edge of the deck, he could just see the bulbous front of the ship where it met the water. For centuries, the bows of ships had been like knives. But not any longer. Wilson pondered the change until he understood. A bulbous prow would raise the bow. This would make the ship more efficient by reducing the impact of the bow-wave. He wondered about the man whose insight it was, and if he’d gotten credit for it.
Zero and Khalid.
Wilson had little real interest in his companions, but during his long years in captivity, he’d become quite skilled at extracting information from those whose lives intersected with his. He was a good listener. That’s what made people think they liked him. He was willing to endure orgies of self-pity and jailhouse rationalizations with what seemed to be an empathetic ear.
The truth was, it was a defensive skill. He paid attention to the other inmates – as well as to the guards – because it gave him an edge.
So it was that without consciously drawing them out, he’d learned quite a bit about his sidekicks. Zero was twenty-two, Khalid twenty-four. They had both grown up in the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut. Khalid, the English-speaker, had a bit of a mean streak. Zero was a happy-go-lucky kid with a signature high-pitched giggle. It interested Wilson that neither were zealots. They worked for “the cause” because they had virtually no marketable skills. One thing they could handle was trouble. Neither would hesitate to pull the trigger. Khalid had few illusions about where his life was headed. “I’ll die in some checkpoint fuckup, something stupid like that.”
It wasn’t the lure of the martyr’s afterlife – the renewable virgins, the wine, and the honey – that made them soldiers in a dangerous cause. It was, instead, a reaction to the squalor and boredom of Shatila, and a recognition that soldiering was the only work available for young men with little education and fewer prospects.
If, God forbid, they should be killed in the struggle, they’d be martyrs. This, at least, would earn them the respect of everyone who mattered. Their families would be compensated, and their pictures would be posted on the walls of streets in West Beirut. For a week or two, they’d be celebrities. Until it rained, or until someone else was killed.
Meanwhile, they dreamed of emigrating to Canada or America, the very places to whose destruction they were dedicated (if only in word). A likable kid, Zero had a crush on Jennifer Aniston, and insisted that if he could just get to Hollywood, she would be his. Khalid was more complex. His father was an engineer, his mother a pharmacist. Neither had worked at their professions in years. Khalid’s own education had been hit-and-run, at best. Prior to casting his lot with the Coalition, he’d worked as a baggage handler at the airport. Since then, he’d fought in Chechnya, where a barber had removed his appendix in the back of an abandoned bus. When Wilson asked him why he worked for the Coalition, Khalid shrugged and said, “It’s a job. And Abu Hakim is good to us.”
Three nights after departure, the ship sat at anchor in the Sea of Marmara, Istanbul twinkling on every side. Two dozen ships strung with lights gave a festive look to the scene, although they were all freighters, waiting to make their way east or west, to the Black Sea or the Aegean.
It was almost funny how much Wilson missed the thrum of the engines. The city, with its smoky fog, mosques, and minarets was spectacular, and he was sorry he could not go ashore.
As they did every morning, the muezzin called the faithful to prayer over loudspeakers crackling with static and howling with feedback. The effect was at once industrial and strangely romantic.
After breakfast, Hasan tapped on Wilson’s cabin door. He looked unhappy. “Dock strike in Istanbul.”
“Dock strike?”
“Hasan can report that many voyages, dock strike. Dock strike Piraeus. Dock strike Naples. Dock strike – this time – Istanbul.”
“How long will we be here?” Wilson was alarmed.
“No way to know. Maybe … few days. Hasan regrets.”
Wilson asked if he could use the computer to get a message to his “business contacts in Odessa.” Then he went to tell Zero and Khalid the bad news. They shrugged and turned back to the television. They had the TV tuned to al-Jazeera and Wilson realized he was watching some kind of bust: A man with a hood over his head was being shoved into the backseat of a black Hummer.
“What’s this?” Wilson asked.
“Malaysia,” Khalid replied. “They say he’s al-Qaeda.”
On the screen, the Hummer was moving slowly through a crowd of cops and soldiers. They parted slowly, as if reluctant to let the man go.
Khalid turned away from the TV. “Anybody they bust, he’s always ‘Qaeda.’ Look at how many cops they have.”
A few minutes later, Hasan returned and told Wilson it was okay to use the computer. Wilson immediately walked to the bridge to do so.
He maneuvered into the Yahoo! account that he and Bo used to communicate, and tapped in the password. There were a few e-mail messages, all of them spam. Wilson deleted a couple, then went into the Draft folder. No messages waited. He typed his own:
It’s very quiet here. Dock strike will delay arrival.
Don’t know for how many days. Please advise party waiting for me that I will be late.
He left the message in the Draft folder, signed out, then walked to the bow. Everything was fine, he told himself. Nothing was wrong, it was just a delay. But what if the man in Odessa could not accommodate the change in schedule? What would Wilson then do with his “molasses”? Hakim was on some kind of trip; if he was unavailable, who would reorganize the transaction in Odessa?
And beyond Odessa, Wilson had his own deadlines. He had to be back in the States with the money by April. Even then, it would take some luck and a lot of hard work if he was to have the device ready by June 22, the day of the Sun Dance.
He told himself there was nothing he could do to alter the situation. Worrying about it was like turbulence in a physics equation, a dissipation of energy. Still, he felt the uneasiness as a kind of physical discomfort.
Wilson stared down into the water. He watched the choppy waves form and re-form. It seemed like chaos, and yet, it was anything but. Like everything else, the swell and crash of the sea was amenable to rational analysis. The movements of the water were a function of the wind’s force and direction, the sinuous shoreline and undersea currents, the temperature of water and air, the moon’s pull and the flux of the ships, lolling at anchor … in just … that … way.
Not chaos, then, but God, or something like it.
Ten
Kuala Lumpur | February 27, 2005
THEY WERE SPECTACULAR, in their way.
Lying on the floor, doing her yoga exercises, Andrea Cabot could see the Petronas Towers gleaming in the distance. Monumentally modern, the buildings were the city’s erectile glory, proof positive in Malaysian eyes that the future belonged to Islam. A Westerner could not be in KL for more than an hour, if that, without being told that these were “the tallest freestanding twin towers in the world.” Left unsaid now was that the Towers were taller, even, than the World Trade Center.
Sorry about that.
To Andrea, who’d taken the bungalow in spite of the view rather than because of it, the Towers were a constant admonition. Built on the site of what had once been a racetrack, the steel-and-glass structures paid homage to Islam in both large and small details. The buildings’ footprint consisted of two squares superimposed upon each other at an angle, so that they formed an eight-pointed star. Within the confines of that footprint were a six-story shopping center; a mosque for six thousand worshippers; offices for the likes of Microsoft, IBM, and Bloomberg; and a Mandarin Oriental Hotel. In a peculiar gesture of architectural piety, care
had been taken to ensure that the urinals were oriented in the general direction of Japan, so that when the buildings’ occupants peed, they did so with their backs toward Mecca.
At the embassy, which gave Andrea her thin veneer of diplomatic cover, the consensus seemed to be that the Towers’ most important architectural feature was the sky-bridge, a gimballed contraption connecting the buildings near their midsection, forty-two floors above the street. This was, by all accounts, a safety feature. Should some lunatic fly a plane into one of the buildings, office workers could escape from one tower to the next.
Which was neat, but did little to mitigate the fact that in this sexually repressed society, the Towers, when seen from a distance, resembled nothing so much as gigantic vibrators aimed at the heavens.
Andrea’s bungalow was situated in the center of a gated and well-guarded compound on the edge of the luxe Ampang district. Built by CIA contractors in the late 1980s to house the chief of station, it had a palmy garden, a lighted swimming pool, and a luxurious safe-room that did double duty as a bath.
It wasn’t just that the safe-room was “safe.” It more or less was a safe. Linen wallpaper concealed a hardened steel lattice, sandwiched around bullet-resistant Kevlar. The ceiling and floor were reinforced concrete, the door capable of stopping anything less than a round from an RPG. There was a closed-circuit television monitor tuned to cameras throughout the house and grounds, and a radio transmitter hardwired directly to a hidden antenna across the street. Like the open telephone line in the living room, the transmitter was monitored twenty-four/seven by the communications duty officer at the U.S. embassy.
So it was as safe as any place could be in a city that served as a convention center for jihadists from all over the world. Not for Andrea the fate of William Buckley, the chief of station kidnapped in Beirut during the 1980s.
