‘Nick …’ He still sounded guarded. ‘How are you?’
‘Not bad, mate. Not bad.’
He took off his coat to reveal a black suit and double-cuffed shirt with simple silver stud cufflinks. He sorted his Crombie out over the back of his chair, making sure it wasn’t dangling in the crumbs on the floor.
‘What’s been happening, Nick?’
The frothing machines hissed behind us as people ordered their double skinny this, that and the other.
‘Same old, same old. But I might be doing a K&R job. I need you to see if they’ve been pinged or not.’
‘How many?’
‘Only three.’
I explained the who, what and where.
‘So the attack was five days ago?’
‘I don’t even know if they’re still alive.’
He fished into a big pocket that looked like it had been specially sewn into his coat, pulled out an iPad and sparked it up.
‘How are things in the K&R world?’
His fingers played about on the screen. ‘Business is good. I’ve stopped working for a percentage of the premium saved. I can normally get them out in about three months, so it’s better just to take a set three grand a day.’
‘In that case, you can pay for these.’ I offered him the plate of Danishes but he shook his head. I dunked one in my coffee.
‘Still busy in South America, Central America, Mexico. Africa is still good, and of course Somalia’s top trumps.’ He finished tapping away. ‘Not a thing, Nick. They don’t show up anywhere.’ He looked up. ‘Do you know who’s holding them? If they’re with a clan? Has anyone been approached about a deal?’
‘Nothing. The BG should be keeping their real identities quiet.’
‘That’s good. But somebody somewhere must have been approached.’
He turned the iPad so both of us could see the readout. ‘As far as we know, twenty-nine vessels held and six hundred and eighty-one hostages.’
The list was divided into countries, age groups and occupations. ‘There’s a lot of sea out there. Maybe they didn’t make it back to the coast.’
That got me worried. ‘Do you think they’ll have been zapped?’
‘Unlikely. They’re merchandise. But that’s not to say the BG didn’t put up a fight and the three of them were killed — or they may have sunk. Those fishing skiffs they use aren’t exactly on the Lloyd’s Register.’
‘What about the four Americans?’
‘That was a total mess. The Somalis went to negotiate with the US Navy. The US Navy didn’t believe them. They held them instead. Their friends on the captured boat thought they were being stitched up, so they killed the Americans.
‘In general, if they’ve got them, they still won’t kill them. Only when they stop being worth money do you have to get worried. If they don’t have outside investors, they’d have to take a loan from their clan warlord to keep and feed the hostages. They might be using your three to pay off debts they owe the clan. Who knows? It’s complicated out there.
‘But if they are alive, even if they’ve been sold on, someone would start to negotiate, someone would make contact. Otherwise there’s no point in keeping them.’
I nodded, and threw down some more Danish. ‘You’re sure they’re not anywhere in that box of tricks?’
‘Just a sec. Maybe I can work out which group took them. You said it was towards the end of last week?’
He logged onto a website, and I watched him enter his password. The page opened up on the Anti-piracy Environment Awareness Chart. It wasn’t a chart at all, more a collection of big break-out boxes, with Google maps, pie charts and bar graphs. He expanded the page to show me something.
‘Depending on the time of year, some areas are more swamped with pirate activity than others. These people are fishermen. They know the winds and tides. They know the sea. They know when they can go out there safely. They know when they can’t — well, the successful ones do. Look.’ He pointed at the screen. The Monthly Piracy Risk showed a satellite picture for each month of the year, and then dots where the attacks had taken place.
‘See the difference between March and June?’
The Gulf of Aden in June had just a few dots on it, and the same past the Horn of Africa and out into the Indian Ocean. But March was a different story. The area was almost black with dots, as was the whole area east, north and south.
‘It’s because of the north-eastern monsoon. That comes down from India and Arabia, normally about December to March. The swell is only about two or three metres, so those small craft can use the wind to negotiate it, get clear of the coast and go out there looking for a mother-ship. If they strike lucky, they might hit what they want to hijack straight away.
‘But June and October are when the south-west monsoon comes in. We’re talking thirty-knot winds and swells of ten metres. That’s the same size as the Japanese tsunami, Nick. They haven’t a hope of making it out to sea without capsizing.’
‘So piracy is seasonal?’
‘Yes. And because we can predict winds and tides, we can have a good idea of where and when they’re going to strike.’
I looked at the pictures. The yellow dots on the Google Earth map showed the 44 per cent of ships that had been approached. The green ones showed that only 18 per cent of those were actually attacked. They must have decided the others were too big or too fast, or maybe painted grey, with big guns. A bar chart showed activity by days of the week. I pointed to Friday and Saturday. ‘Hardly anything happening there. These lads like their weekends, like everyone else.’
He chuckled politely. ‘The British Navy takes the lead on anti-piracy at the moment. They use this to try and predict where the strikes might happen, so they can concentrate their resources. As I said, there’s a lot of sea out there. If they don’t get out a mayday, nobody knows what’s happening.
‘But what we do is put on an overlay that shows the information we’re gaining from dealing with the clans and the kidnappers, to see which groups are active, who’s done the lifting. So let’s have a look at what’s been going on around the Seychelles.’
Every time there was a dot, there was now an overlay and a number between 1 and 19 that represented different groups. The numbers were random in all the areas for March. It looked like a free-for-all.
‘Sorry, Nick. Sometimes the clans designate areas for their own. But it’s open season out there in March. Prime time. If only the yacht crew had had access to information like this, they’d have known where to steer clear of. It’s stupid going into those areas at the best of times. What was going on?’
‘I haven’t got a clue.’ I sat back in the chair. He could see the worry on my face.
‘Someone, somewhere, will know. If they’re alive, the Somalis will have contacted somebody.’ He pursed his lips. ‘You know these three, don’t you?’
‘Yeah. One’s a guy who used to be in B Squadron. The other is the widow of a dead mate. The child’s from her new marriage.’
I got to my feet and picked up my black parka. I needn’t have brought it with me. It was a lot warmer in London than where I’d come from.
‘Tell you what, mate, as soon as this is over, and Anna’s back, why not come over for a week?’
He stood up, and we shook hands again. ‘Any help you need, Nick, you know where I am.’
‘One more thing. Al-Shabab — they still active?’
He nodded. ‘Don’t even think about it. Go find your contact.’
I sat back down and couldn’t do anything but think about it.
Al-Shabab, the hard-line Islamist movement, was Somalia’s Taliban, even down to the suicide bombing and severed heads. They’d been bolstered by experienced fighters from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and now controlled most of the southern part of the country. If those fuckers discovered my three were high value, they’d be coming to lift them from the clans. Tracy, Stefan and BB would die in captivity, or be executed, because … Well, just because.