A trace of amusement crossed Yousef’s face. He sipped tea. Glanced at the Sultan lying in the harbor.
“The news of your success has gone to the ends of the earth,” Yousef el-Din remarked, a rather abrupt change of subject.
“We have made a start,” Ragnar replied. “We will not succeed until the ransom is paid.”
“They will pay. And you will pay us.” The “us” he was referring to was the Shabab, as Ragnar well knew.
“Let us stop circling the fire,” Ragnar said, his eyes pinning Yousef el-Din. “Al-Darraji intended to kill all the prisoners after the ransom was paid. He had his reasons, and no doubt you know them. Now I will tell you the reality of our situation. We can capture ships and demand ransom only because when it is paid we turn over the ships and crews. If we do not, they will never pay again. The money will stop coming. Without money, we will starve. That is, we will starve if the military forces of the West do not invade and kill us first.”
Yousef said nothing.
Ragnar continued, “Feiz al-Darraji did not care about us. He only wished to lead a glorious jihad against the unbelievers. He cared not for us, whether we eat or starve, whether we live or die. As long as he and his men could march into Paradise with the blood of infidels on their hands he would sacrifice us all.”
“So you killed him.”
Ragnar rose from his seat and drew his pistol. He checked to see that it was loaded. He pointed it at Yousef. Walked toward him until the muzzle of the weapon was only a few inches from Yousef’s head.
“As long as the Shabab stays out of my business we will get along. For only that long.”
He holstered the weapon and made a dismissive gesture with his left hand.
“Go,” he said. “This time, you live. The next time, you will not.”
Yousef stood. “I am but one man. The Shabab is thousands. They will destroy you if you stand in their way.”
“Perhaps,” Ragnar said, “but you will not live to see it. And the mullahs will not see any money. Believe that. Al-Darraji did not care whether he was in this world or the next. He did not care about money. So he said. He is now in the next world, and he went penniless. Your revolution progressed not a millimeter. I doubt if Allah gives a damn.”
Yousef shook with fury. “Do not blaspheme,” he roared. “Our jihad is holy. On the Prophet’s beard, do you understand holy?”
Ragnar turned his back. He heard steps, then silence.
When he turned around Yousef was gone. Down the stairs. Nouri nodded at him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Mike Rosen stayed aboard Sultan in his own cabin. An armed pirate sat in the passageway outside his door day and night. Food was delivered occasionally, the toilet still worked, water trickled from the sink taps and showerhead, and the air-conditioning was out. Fortunately Rosen had a balcony and French door or he would have suffocated. As it was, he spent most of his time sitting on the balcony scribbling in a notebook.
He intended to sell a book about this adventure for serious money, just as soon as he got home. He was writing it now. Even added a paragraph to an e-mail yesterday telling the people at the radio station to call his agent and get him started calling New York publishers.
Strike while the wound is still bleeding.
Yesterday that prick al-Said had come for him in the afternoon and accompanied him to the e-com center, where his computer now resided on an apparently permanent basis. He had been given a list of names of passengers and crew and had to type every one of them into the computer and fire it into cyberspace.
Of course, he also had to print out all the e-mails that had accumulated in his account. A few were private messages from his ex-wives, an occasional one from his kid. The radio station was forwarding a lot of material to him, mostly news articles. And the station’s executives had oodles of questions and advice. When the session was over, Mustafa al-Said took with him all the private e-mails and news stories, plus the dirty jokes Rosen’s family and friends forwarded and the spam that had trickled past the filter, all of it, every single piece of paper. The guard brought Rosen back to his cabin. Perhaps al-Said wanted to show the stuff to his boss, Ragnar, who reportedly couldn’t read any language on earth, nor speak English.
Obviously somebody in Eyl was reading the e-mails and translating for the pirates. Rosen wondered who.
He looked up from his notebook at the city and harbor and the coast of Africa stretching away to the south. The head of the promontory and the old fort blocked the view northward.
Rosen squinted at the fortress, shading his eyes to see better, but it didn’t help. He couldn’t see a soul at this distance. He sighed and went back to the notebook.
Someone pounded on his door.
He tossed the notebook aside—he didn’t want Mustafa to steal it—and went to the door. Al-Said and the guard motioned him out. He went.
There was a man waiting for them in the e-com center, an overweight white man with short sandy hair and wearing a linen sport coat over a dirty white sport shirt. Sandals on his feet. He was sitting in one of the chairs and helping himself to a glass of clear liquid from a large bottle, which sat on the desk in front of him. A gin bottle. He reminded Rosen of Sydney Greenstreet in Casablanca, which was probably a slander on Greenstreet.
He glanced at Rosen, took a healthy sip of straight gin, then stuck out his hand and said, “Geoff Noon.” British accent.
Rosen ignored the proffered hand. “Mike Rosen.”
Noon withdrew his hand and addressed the gin. “Well, well.”
Rosen dropped into the chair in front of his laptop.
Noon eased himself in his chair, finished the gin and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Young al-Said here wants me to do a bit of translating. Hope you don’t mind.”
“You from around here?”
“Airport manager. They need someone who speaks English, international language of aviation and all that rot, and who can help them order little luxuries from here and there … all for hard currency, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Ten years this past June I’ve been here. Seen it all. Revolution, murder, piracy, what have you. Still, a chap could do worse.”
Rosen didn’t see how, but he held his tongue.
“Don’t know a thing about computers,” Noon continued, “but I can read English. Rare skill around here. You type it and I’ll read it, then you can send it on its merry way to a waiting world.”
“I see.”
Noon paused to pour himself another little tot of gin. Al-Said and the guard watched impassively.
“So, this fellow tells me Ragnar wants you to send a message to the world, especially the ship owner, telling them that he wants two hundred million American dollars. Cash.”
“Already did that.”
“Deadline is next week. This day next week, at twelve o’clock.”
“High noon?”
“Well, had to pick something, didn’t he? I suggested a week. High noon. You remember the movie? Poetic. That’s what my friends and colleagues in aviation call me. High Noon.”
“I’ll call you asshole.”
Noon flipped his fingers. “Start typing. Let’s see how you do.”
“Deadline is unusual for a pirate, isn’t it? I thought they just kept their victims until the ransom was paid, no matter how long it took.”
“That’s the hoary, age-old custom, tried and true, yes. The men and old women were enslaved, the young women went to harems. But in our new modern age Ragnar dares to be different. He has no facilities to hold almost nine hundred people indefinitely. They’ll start to get diseased, die on him from this and that; he has other uses for his men.”