Penney averted his eyes from the women, looked out the window at the brown river and shantytown and abandoned ships grounded in the mud, all under the merciless African sun, keyed the mike and began talking. “This is the captain…”
The captain’s voice on the ship’s loudspeaker system was heard in every compartment, stateroom, crew bunkroom, lounge and workspace. Everyone who heard it was horrified. Still, they had been waiting for the other shoe to drop, so in a way, it was a relief. They were leaving the ship, going to an old fortress. Crew would bring cooking utensils and all the food they could transport. Passengers were to bring all medications, at least one change of clothes, towels from the restrooms and all the toilet paper they could lay hands on. Passengers and crew would surrender their passports as they left the ship. Obey the pirates. Do as they directed.
The captain finished with the comment, “We are in a difficult position. We must do as these people direct because we have no other choice. Please help one another, give all the assistance you can to those who need it, and God will look after us. That is all.”
Benny and Sarah Cohen heard the announcement and sat stunned. “Leave the ship.”
“It will be all right,” Sarah told Benny. “We have each other. All we need to do is trust in God and go forward.”
Benny stared at her as if she had lost her mind.
Suzanne and Irene listened to the announcement as they watched the ragtag flotilla navigate across the harbor through their porthole.
“You heard that bit about the toilet paper,” Suzanne said. “I didn’t like the sound of that.”
“What’s in that old fortress, anyway?”
“It’s where the pirates keep their victims until somebody pays the ransom. I suspect the No-Tell Motel would be ten rungs up the ladder.”
Irene said a dirty word. She had been doing a lot of that lately. By God, Denver was going to look good when she got back there. Her husband was still there, presumably alive, but even he was preferable to the pirates. As she contemplated imprisonment in the old fortress just visible through the porthole, eating whatever, shitting in a hole in the floor, running out of toilet paper, dirty beyond description, Irene vowed to get a divorce when she got home. Pope or no pope, church or no church, she promised herself she would chuck that son of a bitch and live in her own house all by herself and stay home. Home! If she ever got back. She was going to call the lawyer from the first airport she arrived at in the U.S. of A. Tell him to draw up the papers and be damned quick about it. So help me God!
“This is our last cruise,” she told Suzanne.
“I know,” her sister said. “I’m ready for a five-star resort that doesn’t move. Wish I was there now.” A tear leaked down Suzanne’s cheek.
Irene wiped it away with a finger. “We’ll get through this, sis,” she said.
They hugged each other fiercely.
Mohammed Atom heard the announcement and dismissed it. He had a Saudi passport. He would wave that thing in front of these pirates and demand they release him immediately. Ransom! Of all the insults … He was devout, a good Muslim. Ransom, as if he were a slave woman captured in war. He had heard of those days, but they were long past, long past. No one did that stuff anymore.
He certainly didn’t intend to carry all his luggage when he left the ship, but he packed everything. The pirates could come get these suitcases, help him get them to the airport. They certainly weren’t stupid enough to screw with the Saud family, their entourage, their friends.
He was in a foul mood as he carefully folded his clothes and packed them in the suitcases. Really.
Mike Rosen was typing his last e-mail to his radio station when the captain’s announcement came over the loudspeaker. He jotted it down, quoted it in his e-mail. Passengers and crew were to be removed from the ship, held in the old fortress, two hundred million dollars ransom or else the pirates would let the captives starve. He typed it all as quickly as he could, read it while the pirate in the door watched with a bored expression. Corrected all the typos he saw. Changed a sentence around to improve the syntax.
Then he paused for thought. Decided to describe Sheikh Ragnar, big, fat and dirty, with a lot of missing teeth and a scraggly beard. He had no idea if the beard was a religious thing or if the guy was just too damn cheap and lazy to shave. Maybe he thought the scraggly chin hair gave him a unique look, gave him a leg up with the local trollops. Rosen wrote all this down, because he could and his psyche worked that way, and wondered what else he should say.
He had seen the blood and bits of flesh stuck to this and that on the bridge. He added a paragraph about that in the proper place. These pirates were homicidal—everyone ought to know it.
Added several paragraphs about the captain, who he was, how he looked. Rosen recognized the captain’s wife seated on the bridge, and he wrote about her, about what she must feel watching these pirates force her husband to do their bidding. What she must have felt as she watched them murder passengers.
He was bitter and he wrote as fast as he could pound the keys.
He was still going at it when the pirate in the door said something in Somali and gestured with his rifle. The meaning was unmistakable. Wrap it up.
Rosen did, and clicked the SEND icon. The screen blinked, and the e-mail was launched into cyberspace.
Then he signed out. Found out he had spent another $27.89 on Internet charges. His credit card would be charged.
The captain’s announcement gave Heinrich Beck a real problem. He had two kilos of cocaine stuffed in an air-circulation vent high in the wall of his stateroom, behind the metal intake screen. After the ransom was paid—Beck knew the pirates would demand one, although he didn’t know how much—would the passengers be put back aboard the ship? Or not?
Two kilos of cocaine, nearly five pounds of the damn stuff, was a serious investment for Herman Stehle. It was not to be lightly abandoned. If Beck could deliver it in Doha, Stehle would pay him a hundred thousand euros. If he didn’t get it there, well, Stehle would be a tough sell on the innocence defense. The risks were high, of course, which was why there was so much money to be made. Usually it was cops and customs inspectors who could ruin him. Or in Doha, an executioner’s sword. Now he was dealing with pirates who might rob or kill him.
And if for any reason he didn’t deliver the stuff, there was good ol’ Herman Stehle, a friend of all mankind.
Optimism was not one of Beck’s virtues. He knew in his bones that if he left the cocaine hidden in the vent, he would never see the ship again. If he took both packages with him, with all the risk that entailed, he would wind up right back in this stateroom in a week or so.
He decided to hedge his bet. Take one package with him and leave one in the vent. He removed a small piece of metal from the heel of his shoe and used it as a screwdriver on the two screws that held the vent screen in place. Pulled out one package, laid it on the bed and replaced the vent screen.
The backpack, he decided. Nearly two and a half pounds of coke was too much for his pocket, and he certainly didn’t have the materials to break it down into smaller packages.
The pirates weren’t in the business of enforcing drug laws. If they caught him with this stuff, he wasn’t going to be prosecuted—they would merely take the coke and laugh in his face. Cocaine was valuable in Africa, too, although the folks in these climes rarely had the money to buy the stuff. They would happily snort it up their noses, though, if he wasn’t very careful.