‘How long have you been here?’ I asked him.
‘I’ve stopped ticking off the days, because I don’t have a pencil … Maybe three or four months …’
‘What?’ I cried in astonishment.
‘Well, the market for hostages has been saturated lately,’ he explained. ‘They’re waiting for things to settle before they restart negotiations. Ransom demands may be revised upwards … As far as I know, your government has previously given in to blackmail by pirates in order to free its subjects. It’s going to be hard to persuade it to pay out any more money, at least in the immediate future.’
‘Who are our kidnappers exactly? Al-Qaeda, rebels, soldiers?’
‘Subcontractors.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Exactly what it says: they subcontract. It’s just like any other business. There are big companies, and there are subcontractors. The people holding us are common adventurers. There are no more than twenty of them, all told. Not being powerful enough, or well enough equipped to go it alone, they subcontract. Whenever they get hold of a hostage, they offer him to a stronger group, which in turn sells him on to another, tougher gang, and so on up to the criminal or terrorist organisations that have a solid enough structure to negotiate with governments.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I admitted, out of my depth.
Bruno scratched his temple, thinking. ‘Well, for example, I was kidnapped with a correspondent from Italian television. I know sub-Saharan Africa and the Sahel like the back of my hand, and I sometimes act as a guide to Western journalists. I’ve even managed to get them interviews with particular warlords and local underworld bosses. A criminal gang grabbed us just outside Mogadishu. They sold us for five thousand dollars to a group of rebels. Then some terrorists bought us for twelve thousand dollars. They let the correspondent go because his TV channel agreed to pay the ransom, and I was handed over to some smugglers in exchange for a case of ammunition and three antipersonnel mines. Then the self-styled Captain Gerima got me from the smugglers for two hundred litres of drinking water and a second-hand crankshaft, and since then I’ve been waiting for my next buyer.’
‘That’s absurd.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘Shhh!’ ordered Blackmoon, who had come to stand guard outside our jail, with his sabre in his hand.
They brought us food. Rancid pancakes and shreds of dried meat.
When Hans fell asleep, Bruno went back to his bed, put on a battered pair of glasses, leant back against the wall and opened a dog-eared old book, which he spread on his knees.
‘Have you ever tried to escape?’
Without looking up, he gave a little smile. ‘Where would I go? The nearest water source is eighty kilometres further south. Behind the hill, the country is flat. In front is a bare valley. We’re as unlikely to pass unnoticed as a cockroach on a tablecloth. Plus, there are guards around the camp, and they have itchy trigger fingers.’
‘Where are we exactly?’
He put his book down on the floor and turned to me. ‘Somewhere in hell on earth. Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Sudan, I don’t have the slightest idea. We’re constantly on the move, often at night. This is just a stopping-off point. After three or four weeks, they’ll move to another hideout. Not to cover their tracks, but to avoid being slaughtered. There are plenty of gangs of degenerates operating in the area, and they don’t see eye to eye. The zones of influence aren’t clearly marked, and every gang wanders about according to the situation. The logistics are random; if you don’t have allies, you’re screwed. This area is controlled by rebels and bandits. The regular army aren’t strong enough to venture far out of their camps. The proof is that this fort our kidnappers are squatting in used to be an army outpost. It was evacuated after a rebel incursion, and since then, it’s been abandoned. There’s a village a hundred kilometres to the east, and as there are no more garrisons in the sector, its inhabitants have fled.’
Hans asked us to be quiet.
Bruno obeyed. He buried his head in a cloth that he used as a pillow and crossed his hands over his belly. After a few minutes, his breathing settled down and he started snoring.
Outside, three guards were telling each other stories and laughing. They were speaking in their dialect, but I guessed that they were talking about raids, skirmishes, ambushes and death. They made ‘bang!’ and ‘rat-tat-tat’ sounds to represent machine-gun fire, aped their victims’ supplications, and laughed out loud at the fear one of their cronies had shown.
Then silence fell like a guillotine.
A breeze started hissing through the gaps in the sheet metal. Hans’s eyes were open. How did he plan to get to sleep with his eyes open? Slowly, fatigue overcame me and I drifted off.
Late in the night, Hans woke me. He was sitting up; his ghostly silhouette could be seen clearly in the half-light.
‘I think Tao got away,’ he whispered in a toneless voice. ‘I’m convinced of that now. You remember when they put us in the felucca? I took a good look at my boat, there was no lifebelt on deck. Tao must have grabbed it as he was being thrown overboard. I’m sure of it. Tao’s quick. He wouldn’t have let them get away with it.’
‘It was pitch-black, Hans. You could hardly see the boat.’
He frowned and lay down again, his eyes wide open.
Guilt was gradually driving him to a state of total denial.
In the morning, through the door with the wire netting, I saw a ribbon of dust above a mass of stones that had once been the rampart of the fort. It was the sidecar motorcycle coming back from somewhere or other. It parked outside the command post. The rider got off and helped a man out of the sidecar. The passenger was a middle-aged, almost light-skinned mixed-race man, quite frail and stooped, his ovoid skull balding at the front; he was wearing a crumpled suit and prescription glasses and holding a threadbare bag to his chest. Captain Gerima shook his hand warmly and motioned him to follow him into his office. A few minutes later, Joma came to fetch Hans. I asked him where he was planning to take my friend. ‘To the infirmary,’ he retorted. I reminded him I was a doctor; Joma laughed and made the ridiculous statement that in Africa, all you needed was a witch doctor. Two men lifted Hans and dragged him to a shack behind the command post.
I waited for Hans all morning and all afternoon, but he didn’t come back. When I asked after him, all I got was insults.
‘He’s a good doctor,’ Bruno reassured me. ‘He tended my dysentery. At least he has proper drugs.’
‘Is he a real doctor?’
‘I think so. I don’t know where he lives, but the captain sometimes sends for him when someone is seriously ill.’
Night fell, and I still hadn’t seen Hans again.
The next day, and in the days after that, no sign of Hans. I started to panic and asked to speak to the captain. He wouldn’t see me, but sent Joma to make it clear to me that a hostage would do better to behave himself if he wanted to get home in one piece. I dismissed these threats and demanded to know how my friend was. All I got in return was a string of curses and mimed throat cutting.
On the fourth day, the sidecar motorcycle left the fort, with the doctor on board. Hans remained in the ‘infirmary’. It was only after a week that I saw him, a bandage around his chest, escorted by Blackmoon as far as a sheet-metal sentry box which served as the latrines.
‘Why are they isolating him?’ I asked Bruno, dreading a serious infection that the pirates were trying to hide from me.
‘We’re the ones they’re isolating, Monsieur Krausmann,’ he said. ‘If our kidnappers are giving your friend such special treatment, it must mean they’ve struck a deal for him.’