Midday. The plane had not yet appeared. The news of its imminent arrival had spread through the camp like wildfire. People’s necks were stiff from looking up at the sky. Whenever a bird came in sight, everyone stood up. The children came running, the women shielded their eyes with their hands and the men stopped what they were doing and stood with their hands on their hips. But no plane appeared on the horizon. The delegation was an hour late. Had it really taken off from Khartoum? The captain may have been categorical, but we were starting to fear the worst. Pfer looked at his watch every five minutes, and the lines on his forehead grew deeper. His many phone calls went unanswered. Something serious had happened. Tired of biting his nails, Bruno went back to his ‘brothers’. Elena came twice to ask about the situation then disappeared again. The captain was glued to the radio: its crackle could be heard a hundred metres away. The soldiers walked up and down beside their vehicles, puffing on cigarette ends. An anxious atmosphere pervaded the camp. At about three in the afternoon, a fax came through: the plane had gone back to Khartoum. Its arrival was postponed until the next day. Learning the news, Bruno sank into a state of paranoia. As far as he was concerned, the whole thing was a trick. The plane had never left Khartoum and the Sudanese government was trying to gain time. I didn’t see why. Bruno took me to one side and launched into a host of crazy theories that betrayed just how low he was feeling.
‘It could be,’ he said, ‘that the Sudanese authorities intercepted the fax announcing our arrival here and held on to it. Our embassies haven’t been informed. The presence of the soldiers doesn’t bode well. It stinks of conspiracy.’
‘That makes no sense.’
‘We’re in Africa, Monsieur Krausmann. How do we know the pirates who kidnapped us aren’t in league with the government? Have our embassies been in touch with us? Like hell they have! Nobody’s contacted us. Don’t you find that strange? Just out of politeness, an official should have phoned to reassure us and ask if we were being well treated. But there seems to be a complete blackout.’
Bruno was getting carried away. I guess he was really disturbed by the possibility of being taken to the border and sent back to France. At about three the following afternoon, a small propeller plane landed without incident on a stretch of wasteland not far from the camp. On board were the first secretaries of our respective embassies, a German secret service man, a correspondent from a major television channel and his cameraman, two newspaper reporters and three Sudanese army officers. A technical problem, we were told, had forced the pilot to return to base and the delegation had had to charter a second plane to accomplish its mission, which allayed Bruno’s mad suspicions. Pfer let us use his office, the narrowness of which obliged the cameraman to twist in all directions in order to film the event. After the handshakes and the introductions, the German first secretary, Gerd Bechter, informed me that arrangements had been made for my repatriation and that I could go home whenever it suited me. I asked him if there was any news of Hans Makkenroth. He told me, much to my dismay, that the search had so far yielded no results.
‘How can that be?’ Bruno cried. ‘They were holding him to ransom.’
‘We’ve never received any ransom demand,’ Gerd Bechter said. ‘We know the boat was hijacked between Djibouti and Somalia. But after that, we lost all trace of you, Herr Makkenroth and your Filipino companion.’
‘Tao was thrown overboard by the pirates,’ I said.
The journalists nervously scribbled that information in their notebooks.
‘Who reported the attack on the boat?’ Bruno asked suspiciously.
‘Herr Makkenroth’s Cyprus office. Herr Makkenroth had been calling them twice a day, at nine in the morning and ten at night, to report his position and the weather conditions. Then they lost radio contact. No faxes or emails either. They kept trying to get in touch with the boat, but without success. Forty-eight hours after contact was lost, Herr Makkenroth’s family in Frankfurt alerted the embassy and we immediately launched a search. The boat was spotted in a creek on the northern coast of Somalia and recovered by French special units dispatched from Djibouti. No arrests have been made, and we’re still in the dark, without any leads or witnesses.’
‘I’m not going back to Germany without Hans Makkenroth,’ I said.
‘Dr Krausmann, you’re expected in Khartoum today.’
‘It’s out of the question. My friend is somewhere in the region, and I refuse to abandon him to his fate.’
‘The search is ongoing.’
‘Then I’ll wait for it to lead somewhere.’
‘Your presence here will be of no help to us. Let’s go back to Khartoum and then we can see where we are.’
‘Please don’t insist. I’m not moving from this camp until I know what happened to my friend.’
Bechter asked the others to leave us alone. Everyone left the office. The French first secretary took advantage of the situation to talk in private with Bruno.
Bechter’s awkwardness annoyed me. He walked up and down the room, went and stood by the window to get a grip on himself, then came back towards me and implored me to follow him to Khartoum. Nothing he said would make me change my mind. In desperation, he took out his mobile phone and called the ambassador. When he had him on the line, he held the phone out to me, but I categorically refused to take it.
‘You can’t stay here, doctor,’ he said, after apologising to the ambassador.
‘Is there something I don’t know?’
‘We have no proof that Herr Makkenroth is still alive,’ he said bitterly.
It was a blow, and my forehead and back suddenly broke out in a sweat.
‘Could you be more explicit?’
He went to fetch one of the Sudanese officers, a colonel with greying temples, and asked him to explain the situation to me. The colonel told me that the information he had suggested that Hans Makkenroth was probably dead. One night, about four weeks earlier, an isolated shepherd had received a visit from a group of armed men in flight. They had a number of wounded men with them, including a bearded European whose description corresponded to that of Hans. He was in a critical state.
‘There’s nothing to prove it’s him,’ I said. ‘Hostages with a beard are two a penny. I had one myself when I arrived in this camp. We weren’t in a health spa, colonel.’
‘When the armed men pointed at their prisoner, they mentioned he was German,’ Bechter said. ‘There are no other German nationals reported missing in this region.’
‘Hans got a sabre blow in the back during the attack on the boat. He recovered from it before he was transferred.’
‘This wasn’t a sabre blow, doctor,’ said the colonel. ‘The hostage had been hit in the head and chest and had lost a lot of blood. The shepherd was sure about that. They were gunshot wounds.’
I felt as if the ceiling were collapsing on my head. Shaking all over, I made an effort to steady my breathing. I was in a state of weightlessness, unable to preserve even a semblance of self-assurance. The colonel tried to put his hand on my shoulder, but I recoiled. I hate to be touched when things get too much for me.